Written by Jeff Mackey
Two-time Tony winner and Oscar nominee Viola Davis has sent a letter to state legislators in Rhode Island urging them to support proposed legislation to prevent elephants traveling with circuses from enduring bullhook abuse and long periods of chaining. Davis was raised in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and attended Rhode Island College.
© StarMaxInc.com
The star of the hotly anticipated Ender's Game hopes the bill will bring about an endgame for the well-documented elephant abuse by circuses that travel within her home state, including Ringling Bros., Cole Bros., and Piccadilly Circus.
Davis joins Alec Baldwin, Jada Pinkett Smith, Demi Moore, Olivia Munn, and many others—both famous and not so famous—who have spoken out against the use of bullhooks and other practices that cause elephants and other animals forced to travel with circuses to endure great physical and emotional damage.
If you live in Rhode Island, join Viola Davis in asking your state legislators to support the ban on bullhooks and the chaining of elephants. But no matter where you reside, please do your part to end circus cruelty.
Written by PETA
At PETA, we know that some rules (such as being quiet in meetings) are meant to be broken, but anti-cruelty laws should never be ignored. That's why when we heard that Ringling Bros. was going to Columbus, Ohio, and taking elephants and abusive bullhooks with it, we wrote to the mayor asking him to enforce a law that bans electric and other prods and similar devices from being used on animals in circuses. And what do you think Mayor Michael B. Coleman said in response? Not a peep.
So we showed up outside City Hall—bullhooks in hand—with signs reading, "Mayor Coleman: Enforce Anti-Cruelty Laws" and "Beating Elephants Is a Crime."
After seeing the bullhooks in person—with their sharp steel hooks designed to dig into elephants' flesh in the most sensitive areas (such as the soft flesh behind the ears and inside the ear and mouth)—here's hoping Mayor Coleman straightens up and enforces the law.
Want to join us when PETA comes to your town to help animals? Join our Action Team!
PETA and the Animal Legal Defense Fund have submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) urging the agency not to issue an Endangered Species Act breeding permit to California-based Have Trunk Will Travel (HTWT)—Hollywood's number one provider of elephants for movies and TV—citing the exhibitor's sordid history of animal abuse.
PETA will also be asking that criminal charges be considered against HTWT co-owner Kari Johnson for possible perjury. In her 2009 federal court testimony, Johnson testified that she had never seen anybody in her life strike an elephant with a bullhook. Yet video footage captured during an Animal Defenders International investigation predating her testimony shows Johnson herself, along with her co-owner and other HTWT trainers, forcefully using electric prods (which are illegal in California) and bullhooks to hit and intimidate elephants repeatedly during training sessions.
HTWT claims that it seeks the permit to breed baby elephants in order to somehow help the species, but the company is really just helping itself. It sells these animals to zoos and other facilities at a significant profit or cruelly exploits them for use in circuses, movies, and the like. None will ever be released into the wild—and of the four babies already bred by HTWT, three died before their fourth birthdays.
HTWT also routinely chains elephants for prolonged periods, which can cause severe foot and musculoskeletal problems. No one could possibly be trusted less to have elephants' best interests at heart. And since the Endangered Species Act prohibits harming, harassing, or wounding endangered Asian elephants, the FWS must see that HTWT does not even remotely qualify for the permit it seeks.
How You Can Help
Elephants belong in forests or savannahs, not showbiz. Please choose only animal-friendly entertainment for your family.
Less than a year after a security guard reported the abuse of a chained elephant by a bullhook-wielding Ringling Bros. circus handler in Colorado, an employee at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum—a venue where PETA captured Ringling bullhook use on video as part of a 2009 undercover investigation—has reported more bullhook abuse during Ringling's March 2013 tour there.
PETA's 2009 investigation of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus found that workers were beating, whipping, and hooking elephants and striking tigers.
Based on the whistleblower's affidavit, PETA has submitted a complaint to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), along with an urgent request for the agency to inspect Ringling while it remains in New York (through April 3). The arena staffer—who also noted that she saw no exercise pens set up for the tigers—complained to the Nassau County District Attorney Office's animal-cruelty unit, which is investigating.
What You Can Do
Hasn't being slapped with the USDA's largest-ever penalty against a circus for violations of the Animal Welfare Act deterred Ringling from abusing elephants? Please politely urge USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to finally seize Ringling's suffering elephants and transfer them to a reputable sanctuary.
In the final chapter of a case we've been following for some time now, the Knoxville Zoo has agreed to pay a $9,000 fine stemming from the death of elephant handler Stephanie James, who was crushed by Edie, a female African elephant.
The zoo was initially cited after PETA urged the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA) to enforce the law in the wake of the highly preventable fatality. TOSHA agreed with PETA and assessed a fine, but the zoo had contested the decision before finally settling the case this week.
Benoit Dupont|cc by 2.0
In addition, after this incident, PETA urged the Knoxville Zoo to switch to a safer and more humane method of working with captive elephants called "protected contact," in which barriers always separate elephants and handlers and bullhooks are never used, and the zoo agreed. While this is a definite improvement, no zoo can provide an adequate environment for the needs of elephants, so PETA will stay on the job until all captive animals are free.
Great news out of Knoxville: The Knoxville Zoo has decided to permanently employ the protected contact (PC) system to manage the elephants there.
PETA has been urging the zoo to switch to PC, which involves using a barrier such as a metal screen, bars, or a restraint chute to separate elephants and handlers at all times. In PC, handlers don't hit elephants with bullhooks or keep them chained up. Elephants who don't cooperate are never beaten. PC is a far safer and more humane method of managing captive elephants.
If you're planning a summer road trip, please keep in mind that the National Zoo, Disney's Animal Kingdom, and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom still use bullhooks and chains on elephants—so keep on driving.
Written by Jennifer O'Connor
Tony Gonzalez of the Atlanta Falcons has been called "the greatest tight end of all time," but it's his efforts for animals that wow us. Indeed, he's sweeter than a Georgia peach.
Tony's latest move? He's urged the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to vote for a proposal, introduced by Commissioner Robb Pitts, to ban the use of bullhooks on elephants in circuses.
He notes PETA's "irrefutable evidence showing the persistent, entrenched abuse of elephants who are violently trained with bullhooks, starting when they are babies"—and points out that elephant sanctuaries never used bullhooks and that most zoos threw their bullhooks away long ago.
Circuses Shameful traveling elephant beaters such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—and Carson & Barnes Circus—will continue to use sharp, metal bullhooks and make gentle giants scream in pain unless these devices are banned. Elephants never forget. Please don't forget them—we're so close to making Atlanta a bullhook-free zone.
Written by Karin Bennett
munn∙tas∙tic (mun tas′ tik) adj. Tremendously great; extraordinarily good {e.g., "Actor and Daily Show correspondent Olivia Munn is munntastic for posing for an anti-circus billboard and leading yesterday's PETA protest against Ringling Bros. Circus at the Staples Center in Los Angeles."}
Christian Serratos, Pink, and Jillian Michaels are also pretty darn munntastic for tweeting about the event. Ringling, on the other hand, is hideous. Animals used by Ringling live in fear, are beaten into submission, and are forced to perform tricks that to them are confusing and meaningless. Still-nursing baby elephants are captured and dragged away from their mothers. Baby elephants are stretched out, slammed to the ground, gouged with steel-tipped bullhooks, and shocked with electric prods. These abusive sessions go on for several hours a day for up to a year.
Now here comes the part where you can do something munntastic for animals who are abused in circuses. Check out the video and the ele-friendly advice that Olivia posted on her blog. Show the video to everyone you know and tell them to show it to everyone that they know. While you're at it, help elephants by signing this petition.
Written by Amy Elizabeth
The following posting originally appeared in The Sacramento Bee.
If anyone out there is still wondering about the superiority of alternatives to animal tests, look no further than what is happening right now in the Gulf of Mexico. In its efforts to assist the devastated region, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is saving time, money, and the lives of countless animals—those suffering in laboratories—by using efficient and effective non-animal methods to study the endocrine effects of chemical dispersants that could be used to clean up the oil gusher.
In fact, using non-animal testing methods is the only way that the EPA can get information about these chemicals in a short period of time—a few weeks as opposed to years. Without such sophisticated methods, the EPA would have to rely on crude and cruel animal toxicity tests that date back to the 1930s, and we would be waiting years to know anything at all about these chemicals. Considering the dire conditions of the region, waiting years for an answer is simply not an option.
The modern in vitro tests that the EPA has on hand to study the endocrine effects of eight oil spill dispersants are rapid and automated, in contrast to what the EPA calls "time consuming and expensive" animal tests. Testing one chemical on animals can cost millions, versus the EPA's estimated $20,000 using in vitro testing. And while cost considerations are important, turn-around time is even more essential as ecosystems totter on the brink of disaster. The EPA states that, on average, it would take a researcher "eight hours a day, five days a week, for 12 years" to conduct these studies using traditional animal tests. The computer-driven in vitro tests deliver results in three days. The EPA has already completed the first round of toxicity testing on these dispersants.
The situation in the Gulf highlights the necessity of toxicology testing reform. Most of the tests used in standard chemical screening today were developed in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. They are heavily reliant on animals, are slow and costly, and have yielded inaccurate information about the effects of chemicals on humans. And they have allowed dangerous chemicals such as benzene and arsenic to enter and remain on the market—even after millions of animals have been killed in decades of testing.
Our current system is overloaded and incapable of accurately screening the tens of thousands of chemicals reportedly in the environment already, with more entering every day. Scientists and government agencies are now recognizing that "it is simply not possible with all the animals in the world to go through new chemicals in the blind way that we have at the present time, and reach credible conclusions about the hazards to human health" (Dr. Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate in medicine).
Indeed, Congress and the EPA are now looking to overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act to bring chemical regulation into the 21st century. The EPA and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) are among the scientific organizations calling for toxicity testing methods that are human-relevant, faster, and cheaper and that use fewer or no animals.
In its 2007 report, the NAS confirmed that scientific advances can "transform toxicity testing from a system based on whole-animal testing to one founded primarily on in vitro (non-animal) methods." Such an approach will improve efficiency, speed, and prediction for humans while cutting costs and reducing animal suffering. As it should, the newly introduced legislation supports the continued development and implementation of this shift toward non-animal methodologies.
As the case in the Gulf demonstrates, non-animal testing is the stuff of science—not "science fiction" as critics often contend—and it is surely the future of ensuring chemical safety.
Posted by Jessica Sandler, director of PETA's Regulatory Testing Division, and Dr. Kate Willett, PETA's science policy adviser
Update: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has written to National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins urging him to scrap plans to transfer more than 200 "retired" chimpanzees from the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research laboratory in Texas. He has also requested the return of 15 chimpanzees who have already been transferred.
"New Mexico wants to save these chimpanzees, who have already given so much of their lives to the American public as part of medical research studies," says the governor. "There is a compassionate and prudent alternative to the National Center for Research Resources' plan, and I feel strongly that we must save the chimpanzees."
Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico is also working hard to ensure that the chimpanzees are spared from further experiments. Stay tuned for more updates.
The folks at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they "retired" 288 chimpanzees—who had previously been used in Air Force gravity experiments—to the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) in New Mexico. I say this because NIH has now decided to "unretire" the surviving chimpanzees (more than 21 have died in the decade they've spent warehoused in cages at APF, including three who died by electrocution because of unsafe conditions). The animals will be sent to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) laboratory in Texas, where they will likely be subjected to cruel experiments.
SFBR might sound familiar to readers of this blog because it is the same laboratory where two baboons escaped from cages in May and attacked two employees. PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which then cited SFBR for failure to handle animals in a manner that does not cause trauma or physical harm as well as failure to provide animals with adequate and safe housing. SFBR had previously been cited twice—in 2009 and in February of this year—for failure to house animals in structurally sound enclosures in order to prevent them from escaping and injuring themselves and others. In one incident, a monkey escaped from a cage, got outside into the freezing cold, suffered from hypothermia, and later was euthanized as a result.
SFBR's "punishment" for these offenses? It gets more than 200 chimpanzees to confine, scare, poke, and prod.
Half of the chimpanzees at APF have been living in cages for at least a quarter of a century. As PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo wrote today in a letter to NIH, it's time to truly retire these primates to a sanctuary, rather than sending them back to a laboratory where they are sure to endure tremendous physical and psychological trauma, possibly for the rest of their lives—which could last another quarter century or more.
Please take a minute to send your own letter to APF and let it know that "retirement" means living the rest of your life free from stress (and not confined to a cage).
Written by Alisa Mullins
If you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to an animal, please click here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
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