What Happens to the Bull if It Kills the Matador

Spanish matador Alberto Lopez Simon makes a pass on a bull at the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas bullring in Madrid. The restaurant Casa Toribio, located just downwards the street, keeps the meat from from bulls killed in bullfighting on its menu all yr long. Alberto Simon/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

Alberto Simon/AFP/Getty Images

Castilian matador Alberto Lopez Simon makes a pass on a bull at the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas bullring in Madrid. The restaurant Casa Toribio, located merely down the street, keeps the meat from from bulls killed in bullfighting on its menu all year long.

Alberto Simon/AFP/Getty Images

From the moment yous step into the restaurant Casa Toribio in Madrid, you will see that information technology's, well, full of balderdash. Along with statues dedicated to the animal, several photographs and paintings of matadors — waving red capes in their gallant outfits — adorn the walls, honoring a much-debated bloody Spanish tradition that dates back to A.D. 711 with the coronation of King Alfonso 8.

Information technology's not uncommon for Spanish restaurants, especially those catering to international tourists, to advertise bullfighting, sangria and flamenco. (Note: Not all of Spain has bullfighting, sangria and flamenco.) And Casa Toribio is in a prime number location — just down the street from Madrid's famous bullring, Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas.

But for Casa Toribio, the attention given to bullfighting goes much further than aesthetics. The restaurant prides itself in offer a special dish not found on most menus: carne de toro de lidia, or meat from a balderdash killed in a bullfight.

"We're the but eatery in the globe that has meat from fighting bulls all year round," says owner Toribio Anta, who opened the restaurant in 1981. There are several photos on the walls of him posing with famous bullfighters. "It started off as a sort of joke, when, 23 years agone, I walked down to the plaza to ask if I could purchase some of the bull meat. And it became a huge success."

As an Argentine who grew up in Texas, I've eaten more than my off-white share of meat. But I'd never tried bull before — much less a bull that died in battle in front of hundreds of spectators, a breed of bull known every bit toro de lidia, or fighting balderdash. But on the morning I visited, Anta said the dish wasn't fix yet — the restaurant is only open up for lunch, and the cooks hadn't notwithstanding finished prepping.

"It'south a tough meat," says Anta. "Nosotros cut the meat ourselves, and so cook information technology with red wine overnight, and then it'due south stewed for four hours before we can serve information technology."

Eating the bulls' meat after a bullfight is not a new miracle. But Anta'southward eating place has a sort of monopoly on the manufacture, and he's quick to boast about it.

"The meat from fighting bulls isn't found anywhere else," he says, adding that most of his clients are tourists from Latin America. "It's not available in other restaurants because I accept almost all of it."

A bullfight nearly always ends with the matador killing off the bull with his sword; rarely, if the bull has behaved peculiarly well during the fight, the bull is "pardoned" and his life is spared. Afterward the bull is killed, his torso is dragged out of the ring and candy at a slaughterhouse. From there, the meat is distributed to vendors. During the bullfighting fiestas — days-long festivals in various Castilian cities throughout the yr (the most famous being Pamplona's running of the bulls) — local restaurants and butcher shops offer bull meat for a limited time; essentially, for as long as the festival takes identify. It becomes office of the festivity itself: watching the bullfights, then eating the bulls. (Anta's restaurant, on the other hand, has fighting bull on the menu every day of the year.)

Toribio Anta stands in his eatery Casa Toribio, located just down the street from Madrid's famous bullring, Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas. Lucia Benavides /for NPR hide caption

toggle caption

Lucia Benavides /for NPR

Toribio Anta stands in his eating place Casa Toribio, located just downwardly the street from Madrid'due south famous bullring, Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas.

Lucia Benavides /for NPR

Yet as public perception toward bullfighting shifts in Spain (information technology's already illegal in the autonomous region of Catalonia and in the Canary Islands), some gastronomists say the bull's meat is actually more organic than the meat bought in grocery stores.

"It's the nigh ecological meat in the world," says Ismael Díaz, a nutritionist and gastronomic expert who has written a book on the topic. "In no other meat manufacture in the world is the fauna as well taken care of, or equally protected, as the fighting bull. That is, until he enters the ring."

Díaz says that, historically, the corrida (or the "run") was done with bulls on their manner to the slaughterhouse; the more than ambitious bulls were used in fights as entertainment. Once killed, the bull's meat was given to the matador, who would take the meat back to his hometown, where it would be fabricated into a stew for the whole hamlet to feast on.

"Bulls were used for their meat before they were used for the fight," says Díaz. "Simply that changed over the years. The fighting bull evolved into a species of its own with specific characteristics, and its secondary part became that of its meat."

At Casa Toribio, a variety of cuts from the bull's meat are available, merely the most popular dish is the rabo de toro, or the bull'south tail. Anta says it is impossible for customers to know what bull they'll be eating that particular twenty-four hour period — the eatery has hundreds of frozen bulls waiting to be cut and cooked. He says he buys bull meat from well-nigh 100 bullfighting plazas across the country — and fifty-fifty some in Portugal. That amounts to hundreds of fighting bulls a flavour, which lasts from March to November. Madrid's plaza alone sends Anta about 500 bulls each twelvemonth.

The meat from a fighting bull is "unique," says Anta. "The odor, the taste ... it's as if nosotros spoke of a free-range chicken versus a chicken bought at the grocery store. Correct now, nosotros have 7 of the bulls that fought against [famous Spanish bullfighter] José Tomás. We want to advertise them online, in case someone wants to swallow them. I'm even going to invite the bullfighter himself."

Díaz said some parts of the meat are especially sought later when people swallow fighting bull — traditional folklore says that the bull'south testicles increment fertility.

"For a long fourth dimension, meat from a fighting bull was considered an energizing meat," says Díaz. But he added that information technology wasn't seen every bit a specialized dish until recently, when it became role of a larger trend to consume more organically.

Bulls bred for bullfighting are grass-fed, alive in spacious fields and are particularly well taken care of, says Díaz. They also live a longer life than animals bred for human consumption — 5 to half-dozen years, as opposed to the average 18 months. Díaz argues that eating meat from fighting bulls is "more ethical" than eating meat that comes from slaughterhouses, where animals often abound upwards in cramped spaces, are injected with hormones and don't get to see the light of day.

"The fighting bull lives a completely privileged life, until its horrible death," says Díaz, who recognizes that the brute "suffers stress" when it enters the ring. He says that while the tense fight tin can bear upon the gustation of the meat, there are treatments cooks can utilise to the meat that improve the sense of taste. "Then what's better," he asks, "a good life with a hard death, or a limited life with a death that's a bit less cruel?"

Neus Aragonés at the Barcelona-based Association for the Defense of Animate being Rights (Asociación Defensa Derechos Animal) says that, contrary to what some people believe, bulls "don't alive similar kings."

"They're abused even before they enter the fighting ring," she says. "At 9 months onetime, they're already tested for their aggressiveness by existence provoked. Breeders want to run into which bulls go angrier."

Aragonés' organization opposes bullfighting simply is not against eating meat; it defends the right of all animals to alive a practiced life. She says eating the meat of an creature who faced a "cruel death" and a "questionable upbringing" is non ethical. And, she argues, meat from fighting bulls shouldn't exist considered ecological.

"They're just sticking the 'ecological' characterization on it because they know that people are now more concerned with what they're eating," says Aragonés. "The bullfighting lobby is very powerful, and they're afraid of losing that tradition."

ousleyqueent.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/01/746659693/the-eating-of-the-bulls-from-the-spanish-fighting-ring-to-the-plate#:~:text=A%20bullfight%20almost%20always%20ends,and%20processed%20at%20a%20slaughterhouse.

Share this post