Animal activists see red over bullfighting ‘subsidies’

Date: 23/01/03

By David Cronin

ANIMAL welfare activists havelaunched a new drive aimed at halting EU subsidies for Spanish farmers who hand their bulls over to matadors.

Launched yesterday (22 January) in Germany, Spain and the UK, the campaign urges that breeders of fighting bulls should no longer be eligible for EU grants.

While the Spanish authorities initially decided to pay the premiums only for animals taken to abattoirs in 1987-93, it then changed the policy so that they would be paid at farm level.

This meant that the subsidies could be paid for animals destined for the bullring.

UK-based group Fight Against Animal Cruelty in Europe (FAACE) has calculated that more than €21 million could have been handed over to breeders of fighting bulls in 2002. It says there are 1,187 registered breeders of such bulls in Spain and each could claim a subsidy of €210 per animal on up to 90 bulls per year.

"It is a slap in the face for European taxpayers, when their money is spent on animal torture," said FAACE spokeswoman Mechthild Mensch.

She called on the public to write to the European Commission, demanding that reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy should bar EU funds being used to aid bullfighting.

But a top level source in the Commission's directorate-general for food safety and animal welfare said the EU executive is precluded from taking any action against bullfighting.

"We don't have any competence on the use of animals in sport," the source added.

A protocol attached to the Amsterdam Treaty commits the Union to "pay full regard to the welfare requirement of animals" in devising policies on agriculture, transport, the internal market and research.

But it also states that practices in individual countries in which animals are used for particular "cultural traditions" and "religious rites" will be respected.

Meanwhile, the campaigners have also complained to Regional Policy Commissioner Michel Barnier over a recent application for EU funding from towns in Spain, Portugal, France and the Greek island of Crete, wishing to promote so-called blood fiestas.

These include the Becerradas populares festivals, during which calves are stabbed with swords as they run through Spanish streets.

The local authorities presented a joint bid for €1.2 million in aid under the Interreg programme for regional cooperation on 10 January this year.

Animal welfare activists have launched a new drive aimed at halting EU subsidies for Spanish farmers who hand their bulls over to matadors.