PETA & ADI Urge San Diego County Fair to End Elephant Rides

Elephant rides at Orange County Fair. Photo by vmiramontes via Flickr.

Fair elephants, PETA and Animal Defenders International (ADI) have your backs! Both animal rights groups are protesting elephant rides at San Diego County Fair. They are asking the fair's governing board to sever its ties with Have Trunk Will Travel (HTWT), the company that supplies the gentle giants to the fair for children to ride.

HTWT has been traveling its trunks to the annual fair for 27 years. The company has also worked with Orange County and L.A. County fairs, as well as the Santa Ana Zoo.

PETA and ADI claim that the company abuses its animals, though HTWT denies such allegations. Both groups, along with the band Styx, urged the cancellation of elephant rides at the L.A. County Fair in September. Footage released by Animal Defenders International exposes HTWT trainers shocking elephants with electric prods and striking them with sharp metal-tipped bullhooks. The animals, including a baby, can be seen and heard reacting to the torture, screaming in pain.

Fair Spokeswoman Linda Zweig said, "We take these allegations very seriously," reports L.A. Now. "We've worked very closely with Have Trunk Will Travel. They have a stellar record in treating their animals."

PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said that the fair "has no business being complicit in cruelty to animals or encouraging unsuspecting members of the public to patronize an abusive enterprise."

The 22nd District Agricultural Assn. board of directors will discuss whether or not to hire HTWT come 2012 during a meeting today.

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By Lauren Lloyd in News on November 8, 2011 9:40 AM 0 Comments

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From_PETA

I've known wild and captive elephants since I was 7 years old, growing up in India. I know firsthand, from witnessing "mahouts" (handlers), from what goes on at training camps in India and in Thailand, and now, from watching video taken in the United States, that these magnificent animals are trained with violence and deprivation, after having been torn away from their mothers and beaten. In Asian countries, fire is used to frighten baby elephants out of their wits, their mothers chained nearby so that the youngsters realize that their moms can no longer help them—they are at the mercy of the men (and a few women) with the ropes, chains, and bullhooks.

In the U.S., from pictures taken by whistleblowers like Sam Haddock, a former employee at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus elephant training compound in Florida, to video taken of trainers beating elephants with Have Trunk Will Travel, we have ample evidence that elephants suffer from the pointed end of the bullhook and from being chained by two legs most of the time. Worse, they are robbed of a real life. Forever. Putting children on elephants' backs not only is dangerous to the kids and courts a lawsuit for the county if things go wrong―as they sometimes have―but also shows that some people have a lot to learn about elephant behavior and about the cruelty that no amount of fairgoers' money can justify.

Ingrid E. Newkirk