On Bullfighting

Bullfighting inhabits a place where two conflicting moral influences overlap: one linked to aesthetics (which also justifies us in killing animals for meat, which we eat mainly for taste in Britain rather than out of medical necessity), the other inspired by sympathy, a utilitarian ethic and a non-religious sense of piety, all of them inducing us not to cause suffering in animals for our pleasure.

(from Alexander Fiske-Harrison's article A Noble Death at Prospect Magazine)

Bullfighting could be justified on utilitarian terms, too. The suffering of the animal is weighted against the aesthetic pleasure induced in the audience, and the latter is found to be greater according to some measure. Maybe this could be used to justify some kind of Most Dangerous Game-Death Race-The Running Man-Hard Target kind of show, too. Or gladiatorial games.

Considering that somewhere in the region of 37,000 bulls die each year in Spanish bullrings, there must be hundreds of thousands of Iberian cattle living in idyllic conditions across Spain paid for by the bullfighting industry. Compare that with how British beef cattle are kept and the fact that they are all slaughtered aged between one and two years old, and one wonders if that 15 minutes in the ring is not a worthwhile price for the life the bulls have led before.

(ibid.)

If I were abducted by aliens, and given the choice of spending the rest of my life trapped in horribly cramped quarters before being sent to die anonymously in a featureless and aseptic gas chamber, or pass the time exploring a Barsoom-like world cavorting with beautiful green-skinned princesses along the way before dying in an epic if doomed battle with a bizarrely-clad alien warrior sporting futuristic weaponry, I know what my choice would be.