May 05, 2011

Thoroughbreds: From Elite to Meat

There's no question that four-time Super Bowl winner Terry Bradshaw is a champion, but, vested interest aside, why is he talking up an industry in which even winners are losers?: horse racing. Footballers can retire with money in the bank, but ten thousand castoff athletes who are thoroughbred racehorses in the U.S. will meet their end with a bolt to the brain this year alone. But first, they will have to travel in cramped tractor-trailers, all the way to Mexico or Canada, before they get the chop. For horses, who are high-strung and nervous to begin with, the stress of "killer" auctions and the journey to slaughter is a nightmare.

A few weeks ago, a PETA undercover investigator filmed inside the breeding barns at one of the world's most expensive thoroughbred breeding facilities. We documented a factory assembly-line regimen in which stallions "service" more than 100 mares each in a single breeding season. Nearly 25,000 thoroughbred foals will be churned out of those breeding barns this year alone. Given that only about 20 horses will run in the Kentucky Derby, where does that leave the rest?

The dark, dingy barns like those at Sugarcreek Livestock Auction in Ohio, provide a snapshot of what befalls the hapless losers. PETA undercover investigators who were there two weeks ago found lots of discarded horses being sold for slaughter, including a thoroughbred mare named Coming Home. She is the granddaughter of Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled and cousin to Eight Belles, the mare who suffered a catastrophic breakdown during the 2008 Kentucky Derby as the whole world was watching. Despite her pedigree, Coming Home was sold to a meat buyer for just $200. She was only hours away from being trucked to a slaughterhouse when PETA's investigator stepped in and bought her. Coming Home will at last come home to a safe and permanent home, on a PETA member's ranch.

Coming Home is no isolated case, but this mare shows that lineage does not protect a horse from a bad and frightening end. Because horse slaughter is now outlawed in the U.S., thousands of horses will be tucked out of the country, on an often long journey. Some will put out an eye, others will be kicked and bitten, and some will fall and be trampled as they journey to their deaths. Others who are spared that ride may spend the rest of their days neglected, starved and forgotten, as in the case of well-known New York horse breeder Ernie Paragallo, who was convicted of starving nearly 200 horses. Owners who pay exorbitant stud fees turn their backs on horses who are too old or injured to run or who are just not fast enough. There are too many horses and too few retirement options.

While the best bet for the horses would be to stop betting on the Derby and other horse races, and to stop breeding, racing and killing thoroughbreds altogether, who could disagree that at the very least, the racing world, which makes millions upon millions from horses, should provide a decent retirement for the animals it no longer has any use for. It's not enough, but it's a start, and it's not asking much.

PETA has made a proposal to the Jockey Club. The Thoroughbred 360 Life Cycle Retirement Fund would require a mandatory $360 retirement fee for each registration of a foaland for each transfer of ownership.

This modest fee amounts to pocket change for breeders and owners but would generate more than $20 million toward horses' retirement. It wouldn't solve all the problems and would require proper planning and administration. But without it, tens of thousands of thoroughbreds will continue to be shipped to slaughterhouses in Canada, Mexico and even Japan, where Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand ended up on a meat hook.

For the horses, implementing this plan is a matter of life or death. Terry Bradshaw, will you please stand up for them and be counted?

July 29, 2009

The Suffering of Circus Animals

sfgate / CC

In medieval prisons, inmates were punished with a vile device called a "cat-o'-nine-tails"--a whip made of nine knotted thongs of cotton cord designed to lacerate the skin and cause intense pain. Reforms have rightfully eliminated such cruelty to human prisoners, but for animals in circuses, corporal punishment is still the norm, as PETA's new undercover investigation of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has revealed. It's 2009, yet elephants in circuses are still beaten with bullhooks—a rod resembling a fireplace poker with a sharp metal hook on the end--and tigers and other animals are violently whipped.

PETA's investigator caught Ringling employees digging sharp metal bullhooks into the sensitive skin behind elephants' knees and under their trunks. Eight employees--including an animal superintendent and a head elephant trainer--used bullhooks and other objects to strike elephants on the head, ears and trunk. Employees whipped elephants and a tiger, including on or near the face. One elephant, Tonka, repeatedly exhibited signs of severe psychological distress but was nevertheless forced to perform night after night. The footage can be seen at RinglingBeatsAnimals.com.

All of this was going on while Ringling was already on trial in a federal court in Washington, answering charges that its elephant-handling practices violate the federal Endangered Species Act.

Circuses easily get away with routine abuse because no government authority monitors behind-the-scenes training and handling sessions, and Ringling takes pains to hide its ugly business from potential ticket buyers. All the footage captured on video took place out of the public's view. Former Ringling employees report that a gray powder called Wonder Dust is used to conceal bloody bullhook wounds. When placed on fresh cuts and punctures, Wonder Dust closely matches the elephant's own skin color.

Besides bullhooks, trainers use whips, sticks and electric-shock prods to cause pain and intimidate animals into performing. A frightened animal trying to keep from being hurt again is an obedient animal. Elephants aren't the only involuntary performers who pay dearly to provide fleeting human entertainment. Big cats are whipped and beaten until their spirits are broken.

Moving from venue to venue almost year-round, animals are confined to squalid, sweltering boxcars or cramped transport cages. On average, elephants are kept shackled in chains for 26 hours at a time when traveling between shows, and they're sometimes chained for up to 100 hours. These animals--who are genetically designed to walk for miles every day--eat, drink, sleep, defecate and urinate in a world that's measured in inches. These prolonged periods in chains are linked to deadly foot disorders, arthritis, colic and "stereotypic" behavior such as swaying. It's no wonder that lame elephants have been videotaped limping out of Ringling's boxcars and that about one-third of the more than two dozen elephant deaths at the circus have been attributed to either osteoarthritis or a chronic foot problem.

Instead of roaming vast savannahs and jungles, tigers and lions used in circuses usually live and travel jammed two to a cage, able to do little but stand up, lie down and turn around. That's all the federal Animal Welfare Act requires when it comes to cage size, and that's all that animals are provided. Even though these minimal requirements are grotesquely inadequate, circuses can claim that they adhere to the law. If the public knew that the laws protecting captive animals essentially come down to sustaining life but little more, such meaningless "reassurances" would fall flat.

Ringling has not yet condemned any of the cruelty documented on video. Please sign the petition to asking the USDA to immediately seize Ringling's elephants and work with PETA to place them in a reputable sanctuary.

July 23, 2009

The Saddest Show on Earth

Elephants have the largest brains of any mammal on the face of the Earth. They are creative, altruistic and kind. They use tools to sweep paths and even to draw pictures in the dirt and scratch themselves in inaccessible places, and they communicate subsonically at frequencies so low that humans cannot detect them without sophisticated equipment. Imagine, then, what it must be like for them to be told what to do, courtesy of a bullhook--a rod resembling a fireplace poker with a sharp metal hook on the end--at every moment of their lives. Yet this is what life is like for elephants used in circuses, who are constantly beaten and kept chained, sometimes for days at a time.

It takes a lot to get circusgoers to see beyond the headdresses and glitter to that metal-tipped bullhook sinking into an elephant's soft flesh behind her ears and knees. But I hope that PETA's new undercover investigation of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will help open some eyes.

PETA's investigator caught Ringling employees digging sharp metal bullhooks into the sensitive skin behind elephants' knees and under their trunks. Eight employees--including an animal superintendent and a head elephant trainer--used bullhooks and other objects to strike elephants on the head, ears and trunk. Employees whipped elephants and a tiger, including on or near the face. One elephant, Tonka, repeatedly exhibited signs of severe psychological stress but was nevertheless forced to perform night after night. The footage can be seen at www.PETA.org.

All of this was going on while Ringling was already on trial in a federal court in Washington, D.C., answering charges that its elephant-handling practices violate the federal Endangered Species Act. In their natural homes, elephants live for more than 70 years; their average life span in captivity is just 14 years. Because of stress, travel in boxcars and time spent stabled in damp basements, many captive elephants have arthritis, lame legs and tuberculosis.

Left to their own devices in their homelands, elephants are highly social beings who enjoy extended family relationships. Aunts babysit, mothers teach junior life skills such as how to use different kinds of leaves and mud to ward off sunburn and insect bites, babies play together under watchful eyes, lovemaking is gentle and complex and elephant relatives mourn their dead.

In captivity, elephants are deprived of all these experiences. Life under the big top means "pay attention to your trainers, feel the bite of their implements in your flesh, don't stumble or falter even if you feel tired or ill, obey, obey, obey." It means leg chains between acts, the loss of all comfort and warmth from your father and mother and no long-term friends.

Behaviorists tell us that elephants can and do cry from the loss of social interaction and from physical abuse. Yes, cry. If you wonder how these magnificent beings keep from going mad--waiting in line night after night, eyes riveted on the person with the metal hook, ready to circle to the music in their beaded headdresses--perhaps the answer is, they don't. PETA's investigator at Ringling documented stereotypic behavior, which is typically seen in animals who are suffering from extreme stress caused by a lack of anything to do, the inability to move around, severe frustration and desolation.

Sometimes, elephants stop behaving like wind-up toys and crush the bones and breath out of a keeper, make a break for it, go berserk or run amok. But most simply endure. Their spirits were broken during their capture and, later, God help them, when they were trained for the ring. Otherwise, they would all use their immense strength to fight back against the human hand of tyranny. They would refuse to be kept chained between performances like coats on a rack, refuse to be backed up ramps into railroad cars and trailers like so many cars being parked out of the way.

Ringling and other circuses have made it clear that they have no intention of stopping their abusive practices. And the law--which provides minimal requirements for cage size and little else--does not protect animals in circuses. It's up to us to say "enough is enough."