Ricky Gervais Speaks Out Against Bullfighting

An avid supporter of animal rights, particularly against cruelty to animals, comedian Ricky Gervais recently criticized the sport of bullfighting. In response, he was called a hypocrite by a food critic because Gervais is a meat eater.

On his blog, Gervais writes: “I think there is a difference between animals being humanely killed for meat and animals being tortured to death for fun. It’s the ‘enjoying it’ part I don’t understand.”

He likens it to throngs of non-vegans visiting abattoirs and cheering as animals are slaughtered. “Would that be a sport?” he asks. Gervais finds fox hunting equally baffling – that foxes need to be culled is a silly excuse for the tradition of people on horses setting out to enjoy it.

“I have had several pets put down over the years when they were in pain with no quality of life,” he writes in his blog. “It was the right thing to do and yet on every occasion I cried. What a wuss. Next time, I will invite the food critic round… It’s only an animal, it was going to die anyway, may as well have a laugh. It may even become a tradition, and you can never end those.”

Traditional animal killing for sport makes little sense to Gervais: “I wonder what other wonderful traditions [the food critic] loves. His favourite is probably the one where they cut the tendons on the back of the bull’s neck so they can’t lift their head and so it looks like they’re constantly in ‘charge pose’. More fun for the crowd.”