[Rev. Dr. Dean Ray]

READERS: Please feel free to copy the following commentary and sent it to your local newspapers. Thank you.
The following commentary references recent and current newspaper advertisements for various circus events. Circuses and road side zoos and flea markets continue to cruelly exploit sentient unwilling animals even in today’s modern world where common decency and morality are foremost in the minds of most humans. These activities should be considered outmoded and unethical by most decent caring modern humans.
Contrary to what some promoters would have us believe, animals forced to participate in rodeos and circus acts do not enjoy themselves. The season is rapidly approaching when cicuses, with their animal acts, will be coming to this area. While many children dream of “running away with the circus,” the dream is a nightmare for the animals. Their lives are based upon confinement, abuse, and neglect, and they learn to perform unnatural acts solely out of fear. Physical punishment and negative reinforcement are the norm for animal training. Trainers routinely use muzzles, whips, electric prods, bullhooks, and other forms of punishment to, as former animal trainer Pat Derby wrote in a published report and newspaper article several years ago, “Trainers encourage animals to perform unnatural – and often uncomfortable – acts. In his report, titled “The Greatest Shame On Earth,” Derby said, “After 25 years of observing and documenting circuses, I know that there are no kind animal trainers. Even when ‘not working’, the animals are caged, tied down, and routinely beaten until they learn that fighting back is futile.”
Animals used in rodeo events are dragged, tripped, roped and wrestled through the use of exploitation devices such as electric prods, sharpened sticks, spurs, flank straps and ropes tied around bulls’ and horses’ sensitive reproductive regions, With these and other rodeo tack equipment, these weekend cowboys induce animals to react violently. Rodeo activities create torment, harassment, and stress resulting in pain, injury and sometimes death to the unwilling animals. Events such as bronco riding, steer wrestling, bull riding and calf roping are no longer practical range applications, especially in Florida.
Although animal exhibitors must be licensed by the USDA, the USDA is often reluctant to enforce even the minimal regulations required by the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, and punishment is often minimal and publicity even less. Many progressive communities across the country, including Hollywood, Florida, have banned all live animal acts because of the potential liabilities and cruelty imposed upon the animals.
History has shown that as abuse to animals in circuses rises, so does the frequency with which they begin to react to the inhumane treatment. Most of us have seen films on TV of the African elephant who escaped from the circus, killed her trainer, and injured 13 others before being shot to death.
Animals in circuses travel up to 50 weeks each and every year in confined filthy cages barely large enough to allow them to turn around. The animals are continuously under extreme stress and heat of constant confinement, and always the present fear of inhumane punishment. As one police officer who had to kill a rampaging elephant said, “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.” As law enforcement officials become more aware of the connection between animal abuse and human-directed violence, they become more supportive of strong anticruelty laws and their enforcement.
For many years, the FBI behavioral Science Unit and private and public investigative organizations have been studying and researching the effects of animal abuse which dehumanizes and desensitizes people to pain and suffering, and eventually can lead to violence against other humans.
Circuses will stop using animals when the public stops giving them our dollars and newspapers stop promoting their acts as entertainment. I would encourage the boycott of all circuses or other entertainment acts that use animals, and support animal-free entertainment, such as Cirque de Soleil, Circus Oz, and the New Pickle Circus. To learn more about circuses, go to the Web site www.circuses.com, or www.pawsweb.org.
Someone once wrote, “The question is not, can they reason or talk to us, but rather can they suffer? It is time to eliminate circus and rodeo cruelties to animals through legislation and public advocacy.

This post has been edited by Rev. Dr. Dean Ray: 11 February 2009 - 12:04 PM

[donnab]

While you have some valid points and it would be foolish to proclaim that cruelty does not exist...not all animals in show business are abused or unhappy. Animals do enjoy performing when trained correctly. Just as a pet dog is happier with things to do, so too are many ther animals in capitivity.
In an ideal world they would all live in the wild...but then.. is their fate there any better at times than living well in captivity?

[Samadhi]

Animals enjoy performing? Reminds me of a story...Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, "See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That's what fish really enjoy!"
Huizi said, "You're not a fish how do you know what fish enjoy?" Zhuangzi said, "You're not me, so how do you know I don't know what fish enjoy?"Huizi said, "I'm not you, so I certainly don't know what you know. On the other hand, you're certainly not a fish-so that proves you don't know what fish enjoy! Zhuangzi said, "Let's go back to your original queston please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy-so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.

This post has been edited by Samadhi: 28 April 2010 - 08:31 PM