As Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey
Circus began performing in the Washington, DC area,
several animal welfare organizations, including The Fund for
Animals, The Animal Welfare Institute, and The American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) —
the country’s oldest animal welfare organization — are
warning the public about the brutality circus staff routinely
inflict on performing elephants. The groups charge that to
“train” and “control” its elephants, Ringling Bros. routinely
keeps the 6,000- to 10,000-pound animals in chains and
regularly beats them with bullhooks — clubs with sharp
metal hooks on the end. In support of these charges, the
organizations presented eye-witness sworn accounts by
former Ringling Bros. employees, a recent Department of
Agriculture report that Ringling Bros. causes “physical harm”
to its baby elephants, and recent video footage of Ringling
Bros. employees hitting elephants.
“People go to the circus because they love animals,”
according to Nancy Blaney, director of government affairs
for The ASPCA, “not realizing that they are unwittingly
perpetuating the abuse this circus inflicts on elephants. As
long as people continue to buy tickets, Ringling will continue
to torment elephants.”
The groups, joined by a former Ringling Bros. elephant
worker, have sued Ringling Bros. under the Endangered
Species Act, which prohibits the “harming” of any animal
that is listed as “endangered.” Ringling Bros. uses
endangered Asian elephants in its circus. The case is
pending in federal district court in Washington, DC.
The reports of routine chaining and beatings are based on
several recent eye-witness accounts by Ringling Bros.
employees who recently left the circus and who have
submitted sworn testimony to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture that elephants are routinely kept in chains for as
long as 20 hours a day, and that, from the time they are
babies, they are beaten and repeatedly hit and prodded with
sharp bullhooks in order to “break” them and make them
perform “tricks” in the circus.
The organizations also point to a recent USDA investigation
which found that Ringling Bros. inflicted “large visible lesions”
on baby elephants at its “Conservation Center” in Florida,
when it forcibly separated the less than two-year-old babies
from their mothers during what Ringling Bros. employees
referred to as the “routine” separation process. After
consulting an independent panel of elephant experts, in May
1999 the USDA informed Feld Entertainment, Ringling’s
parent company, that this treatment of the babies caused
them “trauma and physical harm,” and was completely
“unnecessary.” In the wild, baby elephants learn important
social and survival skills from their mothers and are not
weaned until they are about four years old. Females stay
with their mothers and the rest of their social units for their
entire lives.
“All of this treatment violates the law,” said Katherine
Meyer, attorney with Meyer & Glitzenstein, who is handling
the case against Ringling Bros. “Both the Endangered
Species Act and the Animal Welfare Act prohibit the abuse
of these magnificent animals. It’s time to put an end to this
archaic practice.”
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