Animal Cruelty in Dog Fighting Across The World

Animal Cruelty Worldwide

According to the “HSUS nearly 1 million animals a year are abused or killed in connection with domestic violence.”(Humane Society United States, “Cruel Practices”) This is only counting the animals that suffer physical abuse meaning it doesn’t even brush up on the fact that there are many forms of cruelty in lab testing, farm slaughtering, clubbing, and having them live in terrible facilities. 1 million animals are abused or killed worldwide, yearly. That doesn’t even bring up the other forms of cruelty such as lab testing, slaughtering, and terrible facilities for animals to live in. Now when you add everything together you equal more than a million, but most forms of this abuse is allowed by government so it isn’t considered a form of “cruelty”. This means unless we change the minds of the government we will never have a new view on animal cruelty worldwide.

No country is left out of the list regarding animal abuse as every country has their share. Animal cruelty is an ongoing problem that will continue everywhere in the world. Cruelty towards animals has been around since man has been around animals. A few cases animal cruelty are dog fighting, bullfighting, seal clubbing, animal testing, and daily abuse towards animals.

According to the Humane society dog fighting is “ a “contest” where two dogs, specifically bred, conditioned, and trained to fight, are placed in a pit to fight each other for the spectators’ entertainment and gambling.” (“Dog Fighting Fact Sheet”) These dogs fight for the entertainment of the people watching and are born/bred into this lifestyle. The owners that are in charge of these animals don’t care about what happens to these animals after the fight, normally letting the losing animal die of infection from wounds, starvation, or even murdering the losing animal.

Across the world dog fighting is mostly illegal, but some places still allow it. In areas like North America, South America, most of Russia, Australia, South Africa, India, and Pakistan it is banned to practice dog fighting, yet it is still found. Many of the people that are interested in dog fighting do not care about the very minimal consequences that can follow their capture due to the fact of how much one can make in these fights. Two winning fights alone could get you enough to pay off your dogs bills for the remainder of his life.

Many people believe that all dog fighting is underground or in third world countries with a low income, but in fact Japan has dog fighting that is practiced in a few smaller named cities and Afghanistan has dog fighting as a pastime during the winter. The Taliban were actually the ones to remove dog fighting from Afghanistan until recently when it started to become more prevalent in large cities like Kabul.

P.E.T.A recently provided us with a statistic about how “Each Year thousands of bulls are barbarically slaughtered in bullrings around the world.”(“Bullfighting”) Bullfighting isn’t a very large statistical gathering when comparing it to the rest of things that are prevalent in the world, but when look at Spain and Portugal you can see how and why this needs to be stopped. Spain and Portugal do not see this as a form of abuse due to the long history of bullfighting in their culture.

Bullfighting is categorized as when a bull enters a ring and men on horse try to stab lances through the bulls back to make sure the bull can’t lift its head and has significant blood loss. From here more people enter the ring and jab more spears into the bull as it starts to become dizzy from blood loss and eventually gives in to its attackers. Finally a matador enters the ring and kills the bull, sometimes missing and letting the animal suffer in paralysis on the ground as it is dragged away by its horns.

Most people believe that these bulls have a form of a chance to fight back and fend for themselves, but this is far from the truth. In these rings many of the bulls are reported to have their horns shaved, petroleum jelly rubbed into their eyes, and extremely weak from beatings. Before these animals even enter the ring they don’t have a chance of defending themselves as they are in poor shape to begin with. This is also not mentioning how the horses are treated. The horses are forced to circle around constantly at full speed while getting constantly spurred. More often than not getting charged and mutilated by the bulls that are trying to defend themselves. If the horse isn’t too badly injured it is then forced to drag the body of the bull out of the ring.

Seal hunting is a concept that many people don’t understand. It is when you find a seal and kill it, most in a very inhumane way through poking, clubbing, and stabbing with large hooks only to be used for food and sometimes even sport. This act as become illegal in many areas of the world as has the purchasing and selling of seal fur, but even some places like Canada still allow the hunting of these animals.

According to statistics found on Seal-world “It is estimated that each year more than 300,000 of them are senselessly slaughtered. It is also believed that the government of Canada doesn’t pay attention to the quota limits that it has in place. Instead it continues to encourage people to kill all they can and even offers monetary rewards for those killed above the quota.” (BioExpedition, “Seal Hunting”) Even with the pressure on Canada to change many of the laws they have been very unwilling to cooperate with other countries asking them to add the protection.

Animal testing is a large portion of the cruelty discovered among creatures. It is estimated according to the Humane Society “it is estimated more than 115 million animals in laboratory experiments each year around the world.” (“Animal Use Statistics”) This testing is provided as it allows us to see what a certain product would do to a human if used. These tests have recently been found as not helpful due to the differences in animals and humans.

Zoosadism is the pleasure of being cruel towards animals, makes sense to discuss it in this form as the average cases of animal abuse would be the things everyone knows including neglect and beating. Statistically speaking this is the biggest problem when it comes to animal cruelty. It is hard to define abuse in a worldwide case, but it is estimated that the amount of reported cases is somewhere close to 25 million abused animals in the world. That’s not to mention the fact that 2/3rds of the world’s abused animal population goes unreported. This means that the calculation of animals in trouble worldwide is actually somewhere close to 75 million as opposed to the recorded amount.

Throughout history it has been culturally acceptable to be cruel and inhumane to animals without any form of consequences. The first recorded form of animal abuse is dogfighting which came about during the 12th century. The british used their dogs to fight as a sport for money and glory. As this became bigger in Britain they started to breed actual fighting dogs and export to other countries to fight. The conditions of these breeding houses became worse and worse as time as did the sport. Through this sport many started to become even more barbaric, letting these bred dogs fight large animals like Boars and Bulls.

The main reason of this was cultural mixing in between nations. Romans were known as warriors and fighters, they enjoyed anything more barbaric. When Romans came to England and noticed the stronger dogs that they had. From England the dog fighting spread to other places all over Europe reaching places like Portugal and Norway. This is where the sport took off, and not many of the rules have changed since then.

Even if there may be no natural consequences to abusing an animal it is still a large matter at hand. Most of these forms of cruelty are illegal and deemed too violent in America and Canada, but it is still easily done in the shadows of crime industries and gangs. Besides this it is viewed by a normal crowd as barbaric in a most civilized world.

Most of the consequences of Animal cruelty aren’t large at all given such a big problem. An example of this is with the second biggest dog fighting Bust in America. This was the hardest penalty that was ever given to leaders of dog fighting rings. These men had 367 live dogs, not including the dogs that were found dead in their backyard and the hundreds brought in daily to fight. The ranges of these sentences were between two months-eight years for the recorded death of at least 640 dogs. The one man running the dog fighting was the one with the highest sentence of 8 years. The consequences that are in place really don’t do much to deter people from creating trouble in the animal cruelty world.

The laws revolving animal cruelty aren’t enough to stop people. Recently in America, we have been working to create consequences for people that commit these crimes. Thankfully “the Farm Bill, signed earlier this year by President Obama, made it a federal offense to attend an organized animal fight, and also imposed additional penalties for bringing a minor to a fight.”(Cronin, “FBI Case Results In Harshest Dog Fighting Penalty Ever”) This bill was passed on February 7th, 2014, two years ago in a very “well civilized nation.”

The people that learn these statistics normally feel obligated to do something in order to protect the animals that can not defend themselves, others may not feel that certain forms of abuse actually are considered abuse. Everyone will always have different feelings on the matter and you can not change the mind of many of the people that don’t believe this is a large problem.

Animals are countlessly tortured in labs every year, yet we feel it is necessary to do this. According to statistics found by the dosomething organization says “Over 100 million animals are burned, crippled, poisoned, and abused in US labs every year.”(“Facts about Animals”) As you learn more about this terrible situation you end up realizing that animal testing doesn’t even work that well. I say this because another statistic provided by the dosomething organization says “92% of experimental drugs that are safe and effective in animals fail in human clinical trials because they are too dangerous or don’t work.” (“11 Facts About Animal Testing”) This means we are running animals through testing and 92% of these drugs that are safe or effective in animals end up still being too harmful for humans.

The major creators of beauty products have actually banned animal testing. Israel, India, and Europe are all free of animal testing and aren’t allowed to do anything of that nature. They have banned this because they realize that this work is just painful towards animals and has no great outcome. With that they have also banned the import of these types of products as well. Ny times speaks well about the E.U. problem and how they feel:

The European Union banned animal testing of finished cosmetic products in 2004. A second ban, on animal-tested ingredients, went into effect four years ago. But heavy lobbying by major cosmetics manufacturers resulted in an extension of the deadline for some tests for effects like allergies and cancer and for which there is still no substitute. Monday’s action eliminated those remaining exemptions.

People always talk about how we don’t have an extra precaution if we don’t test things on animals first. They seem to think that because of animal testing we have been able to increase intensive studying and research, yet they also seem to forget to realize the truth behind it all. According to FDA “92 percent of all drugs that are shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials because they don’t work or are dangerous. And of the small percentage of drugs approved for human use, half end up being relabeled because of side effects that were not identified in tests on animals.” (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”) Along with that many of the people tend to try and encourage their idea of animal testing by saying that these animals are not being hurt, yet we read another quote from PETA about the laws that are supposed to be used to protect animals “The only U.S. law that governs the use of animals in laboratories, the Animal Welfare Act, allows animals to be burned, shocked, poisoned, isolated, starved, forcibly restrained, addicted to drugs, and brain-damaged. No experiment, no matter how painful or trivial, is prohibited—and painkillers are not even required.” (“Animal Testing is Bad Science”)

If we were to take the culture out of animal cruelty I believe that it would slow down and eventually stop the process. Canada for example has been hunting seals for at least 4,000 years as it was a symbol of growing up to them. The problem with this is that Canadians no longer consume the animal that they have killed and also no longer use this as an expression for growing up, they use all of this as a game. People do not want to remove these barbaric forms of cruelty because of how ancient a majority of forms are, yet at the same time it isn’t right to call ourselves civilized in the 21st century and still torture animals by beating them to death with a club as a sport.

Animal cruelty has been around for a very long time and has always been an ongoing problem. Sadly it seems as though we will never be able to change the views of those who are “culturally” ok with these forms of slaughter. We need to educate individuals the ethics behind saving a defenseless creature as we seem very uncivilized in doing all of this. If this continues many humans will become so ingrained on the idea of abuse that we will no longer feel emotion for these animals. We need to teach countries exactly what is wrong with all of this.

Works Cited

1. Animal Use Statistics. (n.d.). Humane Society of the United States. Retrieved from https://www.humanesociety.org/sites/default/files/archive/assets/pdfs/abuse/statistics/fact-sheet-animal-testing.pdf
2. Animal Testing is Bad Science: Point/Counterpoint. (n.d.). PETA.
3. Bullfighting. (n.d.). PETA.
4. Cronin, M. (2014, June 30). FBI Case Results In Harshest Dog Fighting Penalty Ever. Huffington Post. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-case-results-in-hars_b_5555596
5. Dog Fighting Fact Sheet. (n.d.). Humane Society of the United States.
6. Facts about Animals Used for Experimentation. (n.d.). DoSomething.org.
7. Humane Society United States. (n.d.). Cruel Practices. Retrieved from https://www.humanesociety.org/sites/default/files/archive/assets/pdfs/abuse/statistics/fact-sheet-cruel-practices.pdf
8. Seal Hunting. (n.d.). BioExpedition.
9. Seal Hunting: The Brutal Slaughter Continues. (n.d.). Seal-World.
10. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration. (n.d.). Animal Testing and Cosmetics.