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Organize a Fur Drive
Fur-storage facilities count
on cashing in on warmer spring and summer days—help put them out of
business by organizing a fur drive. Encourage people to get rid of old
and unwanted furs by sending them to PETA as a tax-deductible donation.
(Visit www.furisdead.com/donate.asp or call PETA’s 1-888-FUR-AWAY
hotline for more information.) Convince fur-wearers to abandon their
furs forever by showing them PETA’s new fur-farming exposé. This video
takes you behind the scenes at a Chinese fur farm to expose the intense
animal suffering that our investigators found there. For a free copy of
the video, please contact us.
In
addition to donating old furs to PETA, you can give them to local
wildlife rehabilitation centers, which will use them to comfort orphaned
babies—or you can “refurbish” them with anti-fur slogans to use in your
own demonstrations.
Thanks for taking action for animals!
Megan Hartman
Campaign Manager
MeganH@peta.org
757-622-7382, ext. 8256
Action Alerts
Help Tortoises, Iguana Kept on Display in Illinois
Pet Store
Iowa: Ask Governor to Prevent Further Animal
Suffering in Puppy Mills
'She Is My Little Angel. I Will Miss Her Forever.'
Four Tortured Animals and How You Can Help Send
Their Alleged Abusers to Jail
Ask Texas Prosecutor to Take Alleged Dog Torturer
to the Cleaners—and to Jail!
Ask Louisiana Prosecutor to Step Up, Properly
Handle Case Against Alleged Horse Hoarder
Weigh In With Prosecutors of Alleged Animal
Addicts in Missouri, Michigan, and Tennessee
Support Prosecution of Georgia and Florida Men
Accused of Raising to Kill—or Fighting—Nearly 700 Chickens
Tell Assistant U.S. Attorney to Prosecute
Egregious Abuse at AgriProcessors
Stop the Massacre of Canada Geese in Scotia, New
York
Pistol-Whipped, Run
Over, and Mutilated: Three Abused Animals and How You Can Help Send
Their Alleged Abusers to Jail
California: Support Bill to End Bloody
Rabbit-Mangling Spectacles
Ask Idaho Prosecutor to Go Heavy on Alleged
Abusive Cat Breeder
Urge Studio Management Inc. to Shoot for
Compassionate Easter Photos!
Animals
Horrifically Tortured in Florida, Michigan, and Texas and What You Can
Do to Help |
Why KFC?
PETA is asking KFC to
eliminate the worst abuses that chickens suffer on the factory farms and
in the slaughterhouses of its suppliers, including live scalding,
life-long crippling, and painful debeaking. The more than 850 million
chickens killed each year for KFC are tortured in ways that would result
in felony cruelty-to-animals charges if
cats or dogs were the victims, but KFC still refuses to make changes. As
the leader in the chicken industry, KFC has a responsibility to ensure
that the chickens raised for its buckets are protected from the worst
cruelties.
French Retail Giant
Etam Joins
International Boycott
of
Australian Wool
After viewing
video footage of mulesing mutilations
and meeting with a PETA representative who described the suffering of
sheep in Australia's wool and live-export trades, international fashion
retailer Etam Développement declared that it will not knowingly sell
products containing Australian merino wool until mulesing and live
exports end.
With
annual sales of well over a billion dollars; a network of more than
2,200 outlets under its trademarks across Europe, the Middle East,
China, Japan, and New Zealand; and subsidiaries in France, Germany,
Spain, Italy, Portugal, India, Belgium, Luxembourg, the U.K., China,
Singapore, and Japan, Etam truly is a global giant in the fashion world.
Etam joins a growing list of retailers and fashion designers—including
Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Aéropostale, Timberland, Indigenous
Designs, and Limited Brands in the U.S. and New Look and George in the
U.K.—that have pledged not to use Australian merino wool until mulesing
and live exports end. India's Mohini
Knitwares and seven top designers in India—a major importer of
Australian wool—as well as Pakistan's Bonanza Garments have also pledged
not to use the cruelly obtained product.
Please write to Etam's CEO and thank him for taking this important step
toward ending the needless suffering of Australian sheep:
Richard Simonin, CEO
Etam Développement
57-59, rue Henri-Barbusse
92110 Clichy
France
E-Mail
Read PETA's Guide to
Letter-Writing.
Learn about more ways you
can help save sheep. |
Join PETA
Circuses: Three
Rings of Abuse
Although some children dream
of running away to join the circus, it is a safe bet that most animals
forced to perform in circuses dream of running away from the circus.
Colorful pageantry disguises the fact that animals used in circuses are
captives who are forced, under threat of punishment, to perform
confusing, uncomfortable, repetitious, and often-painful acts. Circuses
would quickly lose their appeal if more people knew about the cruel
methods used to train the animals; the cramped confinement, unacceptable
travel conditions, and poor treatment that they endure; and what happens
to them when they “retire.”
A Life Far Removed
From Home
On its Web site, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus
boasts that it “cross[es] the country 11 months out of the year, logging
more than 25,000 miles.”(1) Because circuses are constantly traveling
from city to city, access to basic necessities such as food, water, and
veterinary care is often inadequate. The animals, most of whom are quite
large and naturally active, are forced to spend most of their lives in
the small barren cages used to transport them, where they have only
enough room to stand and turn around. Most are allowed out of their
cages only during the short periods when they must perform. Other
animals, like elephants, are kept in leg shackles that only allow them
to lift one foot at a time. The minimum requirements of the federal
Animal Welfare Act (AWA) are routinely ignored.
Climatically, the circus
environment is quite different from the animals’ natural habitats, and
temperature extremes cause misery and sometimes death. A lion cub named
Clyde died in a sweltering boxcar as a Ringling Bros. train crossed the
Mojave Desert during the middle of the day when temperatures exceeded
100°F. Clyde’s caretaker told the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
that his supervisors refused to stop the train, even when he warned them
that the lions were in danger.(2) The King Royal Circus lost its license
and paid a $200,000 fee after an elephant named Heather died in a
trailer in an Albuquerque parking lot where temperatures reached
120°F.(3) The Suarez Bros. Circus kept polar bears in hot, humid Puerto
Rico in 8-foot-by-7-foot cages without air-conditioning or a regular
chance to swim before U.S. officials finally ordered that the bears be
confiscated and sent to a more suitable climate.(4)
Veterinarians qualified to
treat exotic animals aren’t usually present or available at circuses,
and many animals have suffered and died as a result of a lack of proper
medical attention. For instance, even though Kenny, a 2 1/2-year-old
elephant, was obviously ill, he was forced to perform in two Ringling
Bros. shows, entering the ring three times. He subsequently died later
that evening.(5)
During the winter
off-season, animals used in circuses may be kept in traveling crates or
barn stalls; some are even kept in trucks. Such unrelieved physical
confinement has very harmful physical and psychological effects on
animals. These effects are often indicated by unnatural behaviors such
as repeated head-bobbing, swaying, and pacing.(6) A study of circuses
conducted by Animal Defenders International in the United Kingdom “found
abnormal behaviors of this kind in all of the species observed.”
Investigators witnessed elephants who were chained for 70 percent of the
day, horses who were confined for 23 hours a day, and large cats who
were kept in cages up to 99 percent of the time.(7)
Beaten Into Submission
Physical punishment has always been the standard training
method for animals in circuses. It is standard practice to beat, shock,
and whip animals to make them perform—over and over again—tricks that
make no sense to them. The AWA does not prohibit the use of bullhooks,
whips, electrical shock, or other devices used by circus trainers.
Trainers drug some animals to make them “manageable” and remove the
teeth and claws from others.
Video taken during a PETA
undercover investigation of Carson & Barnes Circus revealed Carson &
Barnes’ animal care director, Tim Frisco, viciously attacking, yelling
and cursing at, and shocking endangered Asian elephants. Frisco
instructed other elephant trainers to beat the elephants with a bullhook
as hard as they could and to sink the sharp metal bullhook into the
animals’ flesh and twist it back and forth until they screamed in pain.
The videotape also showed a handler using a blowtorch on an elephant’s
skin to remove hair and chained elephants and caged bears exhibiting
stereotypic behaviors caused by mental distress.
Clyde Beatty-Cole circus has
been cited repeatedly by the USDA for violations of animal care.
According to congressional testimony provided by former Beatty-Cole
elephant keeper Tom Rider, “[I]n White Plains, N.Y., when Pete did not
perform her act properly, she was taken to the tent and laid down, and
five trainers beat her with bullhooks.” Rider also told officials that
“[a]fter my three years working with elephants in the circus, I can tell
you that they live in confinement and they are beaten all the time when
they don’t perform properly.”(8)
The lives of baboons,
chimpanzees, and other primates used in circuses are a far cry from
those of their wild relatives, who live in large, close-knit communities
and travel together for miles each day through forests, savannahs, and
hills. Primates are highly social, intelligent, and caring animals who
suffer when deprived of companionship. Like all animals used in
entertainment, primates do not perform unless they are forced to—often
through intimidation, abuse, and solitary confinement. After watching
video footage of baboons performing in a traveling circus called Baboon
Lagoon, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a research associate with the Institute of
Primate Research in Kenya, said, “[T]raining most baboons to do tricks
of the sort displayed is not trivial ... it is highly likely that it
required considerable amounts of punishment and intimidation.”(9)
The tricks that animals are
forced to perform—bears balancing on balls, apes riding motorcycles,
elephants standing on two legs—are physically uncomfortable and
behaviorally unnatural. The whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric
prods, bullhooks, and other tools used during circus acts are reminders
that the animals are being forced to perform. These “performances” teach
audiences nothing about how animals behave under natural circumstances.
Animals Rebel
These intelligent captives sometimes snap under the pressure of
constant abuse; others make their feelings abundantly clear when they
see a chance. Tyke, an African elephant with Circus International, ran
amok in Hawaii, killing her trainer and injuring 13 others before police
shot her to death.(10) Five days earlier, Elaine, another elephant with
the same circus, pinned eight children and their parents under a fence
that separated the first row of spectators from the circus rings.(11)
As Florida Officer
Blaine Doyle, who shot 47 rounds into Janet, an elephant who ran amok
with three children on her back at the Great American Circus in Palm
Bay, noted, “I think these elephants are trying to tell us that zoos and
circuses are not what God created them for ... but we have not been
listening.”(12) Since 1990, PETA has documented 65 human deaths and more
than 130 injuries attributable to captive elephant rampages. Please
visit
www.circuses.com/attacks-ele03.asp
for more information.
What You Can Do
As more people become aware of the cruelty involved in forcing
animals to perform, circuses that use animals are finding fewer places
to set up their big tops. The use of animals in entertainment has
already been restricted or banned in several U.S. localities—such as
South Carolina and Orange County and Pasadena, California—as well as in
cities around the world, like New Delhi, Belfast, and Rio de Janeiro.
The council of the Chester-le-Street district in the U.K. banned events
in which animals perform as “a relic of a bygone era.”(13)
Don’t patronize circuses
that use animals. PETA can provide literature to pass out to patrons if
the circus comes to your town. Find out about state and local animal
protection laws, and report any possible violations to authorities.
Contact PETA for information on ways to get an animal-display ban passed
in your area.
Take your family to see only
animal-free circuses, such as Cirque du Soleil or the Pickle Family
Circus.
References
1) Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, “Town
Without a ZIP Code,” Feld
Entertainment, Inc., 2004.
2) Marc Kaufman, “USDA Investigates Death of Circus Lion; Activists
Challenge Ringling Bros.’ Account, Say They Notified Federal Officials,”
The Washington Post, 8 Aug. 2004.
3) “Circus to Appeal Elephant-Death Fine,” Associated Press, 17 Dec.
1997.
4) Howie Paul Hartnett, “2 of 3 Polar Bears Make It to N.C.,”
Charlotte Observer, 20 Nov. 2002.
5) P. Douglas Filaroski, “Animal Rights Activists Protest Circus, Recall
Elephants’ Death,” Florida Times-Union, 20 Jan. 2002.
6) Randi Hutter Epstein, “Circus Life Drives Animals Insane, Two British
Rights Groups Contend,” Associated Press, 24 Aug. 1993.
7) Jan Creamer and Tim Phillips, “The
Ugliest Show on Earth,” Animal
Defenders, Ltd., last accessed 22 Nov. 2004.
8) Testimony of Tom Rider, Legislative Hearing on H.R.2929, 13 Jun.
2000.
9) Robert Sapolsky, letter to PETA, Jun. 2004.
10) Paula Gillingham et al., “1 Killed, 13 Injured; Panic at
Blaisdell,” The Honolulu Advertiser, 21 Aug. 1994.
11) Paula Gillingham et al., “Family Recalls Brush With Another
Elephant,” The Honolulu Advertiser, 21 Aug. 1994.
12) Louis Sahagun, “Elephants Pose Giant Dangers,” Los Angeles Times,
11 Oct. 1994.
13) “Circuses Face New Ban,” The Journal (U.K.), 27 Nov. 2000.
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