For Immediate Release: December 1, 2006

Contacts: Mercy For Animals: 1-866-MFA-Ohio

ABUSE OF RINGLING ANIMALS SPUR PROTEST IN COLUMBUS

Parents, Kids Urged to Boycott Cruel Circus

Columbus, OH - Backed by a banner that reads “Circus Animals are Beaten, Shocked, and Chained” and holding posters that declare “Ringling Tortures Animals,” members of the Ohio animal advocacy organization Mercy For Animals will greet attendees of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Baily Circus in Columbus tonight, urging them to make this circus their last. One protester, wearing an electronic “body screen TV” will air graphic video footage of a circus elephant trainer repeatedly attacking elephants with a steel-tipped bullhook while screaming obscenities.

Date: Friday, December 1

Time: 6 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Location: Outside the main entrance of Nationwide Arena, 200 W. Nationwide Blvd.

In order to force wild animals to perform stressful and often painful acts, trainers use metal bullhooks, whips, muzzles, and electric prods. Shocking undercover video footage shows elephants being beaten with bullhooks by a circus trainer. The violent training methods shown in the video are commonly used in circuses, including Ringling, which is a chronic violator of the federal Animal Welfare Act.

Further, Ringling animals continue to suffer and die as a result of egregious neglect or downright abuse, and would-be circusgoers are shocked to learn the details of the circus’s cruelty, including the following:

On August 5, 2004, Ringling killed an 8-month-old elephant named Riccardo—who was afflicted with a bone disorder—after he fractured both hind legs when he fell off a circus pedestal.

On July 13, 2004, a 2-year-old lion named Clyde died, apparently of heatstroke, while traveling through the intense heat of the Mojave Desert in a poorly ventilated boxcar.

In 1999, Benjamin, a 4-year-old baby elephant, drowned in a pond as he tried to move away from a trainer who was threatening him with a bullhook.

In 1998, Ringling paid $20,000 to settle U.S. Department of Agriculture charges of failing to provide veterinary care to Kenny, a 2-year-old elephant who was forced to perform while sick.

The USDA has three open investigations into Ringling for the deaths of Clyde and Riccardo and for a videotape, described by an elephant expert as clear abuse, which shows a handler hitting and jabbing a 7-year-old elephant with a bullhook.

“In circuses, bullhooks, electric-shock prods, whips, and chains are not the exception, they are the rule,” says MFA’s Executive Director Nathan Runkle. “To circus trainers, the suffering and deaths of animals are no more than the cost of doing business.”