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On Sunday, Pittsburgh City Councilor Darlene Harris posted pictures to her Facebook page of her behind-the-scenes visit to the Shrine Circus. In one photo, Harris can be seen riding an elephant. In another, she’s on a camel.
People quickly criticized Harris, citing the circus’ history of animal mistreatment.
“The cruelty that elephants like this have suffered for decades is unconscionable and one by one, either the tools of the cruelty – bullhooks – or the very source of the cruelty – using wild animals like elephants in circuses – is being outlawed throughout the US,” wrote Lori Sirianni on Harris’ Facebook page.
And now national animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is weighing in. Yesterday, PETA sent a letter to Harris about the abuses circus animals experience.
“The circus’s deplorable history of hurting and exploiting animals is all in the public record,” Rachel Mathews, PETA Foundation associate director of captive-animal law enforcement, said in a statement. “If Darlene Harris is the animal advocate she claims to be, she should support efforts underway in Pittsburgh to ban cruel animal acts — not condone cruelty by riding an elephant.”
Harris has been an animal advocate in the past. In 2015, she sponsored legislation, which passed, prohibiting the capture and harm of wild birds; and she’s successfully advocated other legislation to help protect animals over the years.
But Harris opposed legislation sponsored by City Councilor Bruce Kraus last year to prohibit performances by wild or exotic animals for public entertainment or amusement. A vote on the ordinance has never taken place. In 2015, Kraus had sponsored legislation making it illegal to use bullhooks or similar devices on elephants, but it was later withdrawn.
Read the full letter PETA sent to Harris below.
April 13, 2017
Darlene Harris
District 1 Council Member
Pittsburgh City Council
Dear Ms. Harris,
I’m writing on behalf of PETA and our more than 6.5 million members and supporters worldwide, including thousands in Pittsburgh, in response to your request for proof of abuse at the Shrine circus. Our files are bursting with reports of cruelty, animal-welfare violations, and other problems. I hope that after learning the facts, you will reconsider your support of circuses that force animals to perform and apologize for promoting the cruelty inherent in using animals for entertainment.
Traci, the elephant you rode recently, was leased from Carson & Barnes Circus, a notorious animal abuser with repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). Its laundry list of offenses includes failing to provide animals with minimum space and clean water and failing to identify, convey, or document treatment of veterinary care for several animals, including an elephant who has since died.
You may not realize that elephants do not give rides willingly. They must be violently “broken” first. Tim Frisco, Carson & Barnes’ animal-care director, was videotaped viciously attacking elephants with heavy steel-tipped bullhooks and electric prods and instructing trainers to sink the bullhooks into the animals’ flesh and twist them until the elephants scream in pain.
Carson & Barnes also has an alarming record of endangering the public. Last year, it was ordered to pay a $16,000 fine to settle an AWA lawsuit after three elephants became frightened, escaped from a performance, and ran amok for nearly an hour. In 2011, a federal inspector saw a circus employee exchanging money with a coworker while the elephant he was supposed to be controlling walked away with passengers in the saddle.
As you know, last year, City Council President Bruce A. Kraus introduced legislation to ban animals from being bred, caged, trained, and transported for entertainment in Pittsburgh. We urge you to consider supporting this legislation, which would spare animals so much suffering.
Sincerely,
John Di Leonardo, M.S.
Senior Campaigner, Animals in Entertainment
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2017.
Councilwoman Harris should apologize. Anyone who truly advocates for animals wouldn’t show such an alarming indifference to their exploitation.
I’m with PETA. Have a heart, Councilwoman Harris.
I’m glad PETA answered Councilwoman Harris’ request for proof of abuse taking place in the circus. Perhaps the long list of abuses will cause her to have a change of heart!
I’m with PETA. Elephants aren’t amusement park rides and shouldn’t be treated as such. They are living beings. Abusing and exploiting them for our own selfish purposes is cruel and dangerous.
Thank you to the Pittsburgh City Paper for covering this issue of elephant exploitation and cruelty, and for including a portion of my comment on Councilor Harris’ Facebook page. A minor correction; my name is Lori, not Lisa. It’s disappointing that a city councilor should condone and participate in circus elephant-back riding, and be a poor example to her constituents.
PETA’s John Di Leonardo has noted the multiple animal welfare violations involving the elephants that the Shrine Circus leases from Carson & Barnes, and as I further noted on Councilor Harris’ page, the states of Rhode Island and California have both banned the use of bullhooks on elephants.
Bullhooks resemble fireplace pokers and are weapons of fear, domination and abuse. Their sharp tips are used to hook elephants in their most tender areas, including behind their ears and legs, and in their mouths and genitals, to force them to submit and obey. Elephants, no matter how “tamed” by breaking their spirit through abusive circus training, remain wild animals and do not willingly accept riders on their backs. Anyone who believes elephants enjoy doing so, or enjoy performing degrading tricks in the circus, is sadly misinformed.
In addition, there are public safety concerns involving circus elephant acts and rides. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that a minimum of 12% of all captive elephants in the US has been exposed to TB (tuberculosis), an airborne bacterium which is transmissible between elephants and humans.
Circuses have also been cited for failing to control elephants at all times, including while giving rides, and elephants are capable of injuring or killing people when they’ve had enough of circus abuse. Elephants have rampaged (Google Tyke in Honolulu in 1994), escaped, stomped on trainers, and at 6,000-8,000 lbs. they’re capable of causing grievous bodily harm and death to people.
We have safety standards for workplaces, automobiles, and amusement park rides; why on earth would anyone risk their safety or that of their children by climbing or placing them onto the back of an 8,000-lb. wild animal?
I hope that Councilor Harris makes the time and effort to learn more about circus elephant abuse and supports City Council President Kraus’ proposed ordinance to ban the use of wild and exotic animals for entertainment in Pittsburgh. It’s past time for society to recognize that there’s nothing amusing about animal cruelty.
Congratulations to Council woman Harris. I took the same ride over 60 years ago……and never forgot what is was like to be that close to a majestic elephant and a camel. It made me a lifelong circus fan. Sorry, the era is over for the most part as the circus is a conservation entity of the elephant and camel that you experienced. As you know elephants no matter where they live, usually have jobs.
The circus has been a target of ASPCA, HSUS, ALDF and of course PETA, and other ARs philosophical ideology for over 150 years. It is time the vegan animal rights philosophical movement give them a rest.
It boggles the mind that Ms. Harris couldn’t find the volumes of damning information about this circus with a 30 second Google search. That kind of ignorance is willful. If she is an “animal lover” as she claims, exploiting an elephant and camel for her photo op is a strange way of showing it.
Just a “minor” note (although it isn’t minor in a journalistic sense): this story isn’t about PeTA. PeTA jumped in at the last minute when they saw a trending issue and grabbed the media spotlight. Why on earth City Paper made it sound like it was all about PeTA when there has been a relentless, popular, locally-based campaign in the city for a couple of years now working to get animal circuses banned here, I really don’t know. Not fair play, CP.
I always find it amusing when liberals eat their own.
BTW, PeTA is basically a domestic terrorist organization.
Unfortunate that so called animal rights activists do not spend their time focusing on paper mills, logging operations, fences, mines, highways & roads, dams, coal plants and all the actual things that kill, maim, starve, torture and otherwise damage animals and animal communities. Instead they attack one of the last places on earth were animals have sanctuary and are at the very least, understood, loved and valued as fellow creatures on this planet. Some metaphor about the forest and some tress…