whereas cocks do fight each other, and to the death sometimes.

but, as a rule, they aren't doing it for our "entertainment". as well, all kinds of animals engage in to-the-death struggles, in the wild. again, these are last gasp, fights for survival, when all other options are gone, not staged for some human's vicarious pleasure.

your comparison holds no water, and i'm surprised it was presented. clearly, any event using animals to fight is barbaric, and has no legitimate place in civilized society, regardless of the native "culture". that's a red herring, thrown in to make us gringos feel guilty.

The main purpose of cockfighting in particular is gambling, which makes it particularly obscene in my books.

Especially after seeing what we do from the top down from premptive war to torture not to mention the abu ghraib pron shows.

Chasing a bull around for an hour, poking it with spears, and then killing it with a sword thrust is unquestionably very cruel. But it is surely not significantly more cruel than herding a cow into a confined pen, knocking it unconscious with a bolt to the head, shackling it, and then causing it to bleed to death, which is what happens in an abattoir.

Add to this the important data that (1) the prior life of an animal raised for sport will have been, most often, longer, less confined, and less painful than that of one raised for food, and (2) that the meat of bulls killed in bullfighting is sold after the fight, just as the meat of an animal commercially slaughtered would be; the only reasonable conclusion from these facts is that the killing of a certain number of animals in bullfighting is either less cruel or, at worst, no more cruel than the killing of an equivalent number in the meat industry.

This leaves, I submit, three plausible positions that one can take on the issue, dependent on one's views on animal cruelty in general. First, one can view both bullfighting and the meat industry as morally acceptable; second, one can view both as morally unacceptable, and refuse to participate in them (which means, all other things being equal, neither eating meat produced in mainstream abattoirs nor attending bullfights) while rejecting the claim that the powers of the state should be used to prohibit others from participating in them; third, one can work to get the state to suppress both bullfighting and the animal slaughter industry in its current form. But to urge the state to prohibit bullfighting on animal cruelty grounds without simultaneously urging it to end equally cruel practices in the meat industry (which means closing down the vast majority of extant slaughterhouses), or to condemn those who attend bullfights without also condemning those who eat mass-produced meat, is inconsistent and (barring unusually naive ignorance about the meat industry) hypocritical.      

yes roy, bullfighting and cockfighting, and any related videos, should be banned. unless, of course, you plan to bring back executing christians in the coliseum, by having them torn apart by lions, while 1,000's enjoy the spectacle.

no squeaky, not all cultures are equal. you should know better than to even make an idiotic comment like that. some arab cultures remove a girl's clitoris, to reduce her chances of being unchaste when she marries. just because it's their "culture" doesn't make it ok, would you not agree? if you wouldn't, i submit you're seriously deranged, and should immediately seek competent, professional medical help.

ignore jim. his comment, vis a vis america and slavery, shows just how clueless he is about US history.

with regards to your assertion that we have no standing to question the morality of other cultures, i vehemently disagree. any culture that has brutality, solely for its own sake, as a featured aspect, is inherently immoral. the last time i checked, our culture doesn't, and hasn't, ever. not officially condoned anyway.

You miss my point. I am perfectly aware that abattoirs do not broadcast the slaughter of animals or sell tickets. What I am claiming is that the difference between killing an animal in front of spectators and killing an animal in private in an abattoir is not a morally relevant difference; what is relevant is the quantity of suffering that the animal undergoes. Bear in mind that I am not arguing that bullfighting is morally acceptable; I am merely arguing that it is no more morally unacceptable than the meat industry. To what degree the meat industry is morally unacceptable is an entirely separate question.