Ringling to Phase Out Elephant Acts by 2018, but Should Do It NOW
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
March 2015

If Ringling is serious about this decision, then it needs to end its use of elephants NOW.

For 35 years, activists have protested Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’ cruelty to elephants. PETA also caught Ringling’s abuse on video and released to the world a former Ringling trainer’s photos of the circus’s violent baby-elephant training to the world. We know that extreme abuse of these majestic animals occurs every single day, so if Ringling is telling the truth about ending this horror, then it’s a day to pop the champagne corks and rejoice.

Ringling baby elephant

However, many of the elephants with Ringling are painfully arthritic or have tuberculosis, so their retirement day needs to come now. Three years is too long for a mother elephant separated from her calf, too long for a baby elephant beaten with bullhooks (a sharp weapon resembling a fireplace poker that Ringling handlers use routinely), and too long for an animal who would roam up to 30 miles a day in the wild but who is instead kept in shackles.

If Ringling is serious about this decision, then it needs to end its use of elephants NOW.


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