PETA and GAIA Say ‘Go Rodeo!’: With Horses, No Real Ones Included
For Immediate Release:
October 7, 2025
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
In an unusual twist, PETA and animal protection group GAIA (Global Action in the Interest of Animals) sent a joint letter today urging the Hobby Horse Federation to add a rodeo discipline to hobby horsing. PETA and GAIA note that such an event would highlight what the federation does best: entertaining audiences with human athleticism and creativity that doesn’t saddle animals with suffering.
As PETA and GAIA’s appeal explains, in rodeos, “animals are deliberately provoked into unnatural and stressful behavior through the use of flank straps and spurs,” and “horses and bulls are often forced to buck violently in response to pain or pressure.” This can cause serious injuries, including broken backs and necks, heart attacks, aneurysms, and even death. When horses become too old or worn out to continue, “retirement” is often a one-way trip to the slaughterhouse.
“While rodeos force frightened horses into dangerous stunts, hobby horsing is a global phenomenon that proves audiences can be dazzled without abusing animals,” says PETA UK Vice President Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA and GAIA are calling on the Hobby Horse Federation to embrace this new discipline and show the world that exposing animals to fear, pain, or harm doesn’t belong in modern sports.”
Rodeo participants have been videotaped choking calves and twisting their necks while slamming them onto the ground, injecting bulls with steroids to induce an aggressive response to harassment, using sharp spurs to make horses buck, and zapping horses and cows with electric “hotshots” so that the animals will charge in a state of panic out of a chute. Every reputable animal protection group denounces these events.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
