Video: Elephants Repeatedly Struck With Bullhook at Cheyenne-Bound Garden Bros. Circus Show

New Footage Prompts PETA to Renew Call for Ice & Events Centers to Cancel Circus’s Cruel Animal Acts

For Immediate Release:
June 18, 2018

Contact:
David Perle – 202-483-7382

As Garden Bros. Circus prepares to perform at the Cheyenne Ice & Events Center on Wednesday, PETA shared new video footage this morning from a recent Garden Bros. performance that shows an elephant handler overtly and frequently poking, yanking, and prodding elephants in sensitive areas of their bodies. While on stage, elephant trainer Anthony Frisco can be seen using a bullhook—a weapon that resembles a fireplace poker with a sharp metal hook on one end—to coerce the elephants into performing by jabbing them behind their ears and legs and down their sides. PETA has also shared this new video footage with the Laramie Ice & Events Center, where the circus is scheduled to perform on Tuesday.

PETA, which previously alerted the ice and events centers to Garden Bros.’ long history of working with abusive animal exhibitors, is renewing its call for the venue to bar the circus’ slated animal acts.

“Circuses are notorious for using weapons to force elephants to perform, and they even use a gray powder called Wonder Dust to cover up the bloody wounds,” says PETA Foundation Deputy Director Rachel Mathews. “PETA is calling on audiences to stay away from Garden Bros. Circus unless it nixes the animal acts and only performs with talented, willing human performers.”

Garden Bros. has an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau. Its elephant provider, Carson & Barnes Circus, has been cited for more than 100 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act and employs as its head trainer Tim Frisco—Anthony Frisco’s father—who was caught on video attacking elephants with a bullhook and an electric prod. In a recent whistleblower complaint, a former Garden Bros. employee described frequently seeing elephants with blood dripping from behind their ears.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—notes that venues and localities across the country, including in Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Vermont, and Virginia, have canceled Garden Bros. shows or barred it from performing with animals. More than 620 venues and dozens of communities have banned wild-animal acts.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.