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THE REAL ANTI-CIRCUS AGENDA

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THE ANIMAL LIBERATION CASE AGAINST CIRCUS AND ZOOS

In a period of little more than thirty years Animal Liberation in the guise of Animal Welfare and Animal Rights has achieved remarkable success peddling its own legitimacy throughout much of Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. As noted elsewhere, that success has been predicated on carefully orchestrated campaigns that never fully spell out just what liberation is or means. By draping themselves in the mantle of "anti-cruelty" or "public safety" liberationists appear to be "mainstream" while their targets would seem to be out-of-touch. Although the most outrageous pronouncements by groups like PeTA are met with healthy skepticism, that only serves to make their more mundane charges sound credible.

Liberationists choose targets with vulnerabilities. Early in their campaigns it quickly became apparent that pictures of furbearers in leg hold traps were rightly disturbing to almost everybody. The obvious "cruelty" was built into the images. Once the connection was made between cruelty and fur, a small farm raising mink or martins could be portrayed as a mere extension of that abuse. The fact that farmers and trappers are not synonymous was irrelevant. The fact that in trapping there are humane alternatives to steel-leg-holds was overlooked entirely. Similarly even die-hard corporate apologists now acknowledge that lab animal testing, particularly in the cosmetics industry, was twenty years ago needlessly inhumane and frequently overused. Simply put, it was cheaper to test irritants using rabbits than it was to use existing non-animal models. Again, it didn't take too many photographs of lab rabbits undergoing irritant testing to convince the marketplace that cruelty was involved. Liberationists would have us believe that if testing hairspray on rabbits is wrong, so is all lab animal testing. While drug companies have had some success countering the liberationist argument by touting the life saying implications of their testing, even legitimate lab animal work in personal hygiene products frequently draws vocal protest.

Circuses and more recently zoos are targeted by liberationists who seek to exploit three areas of vulnerability. Cruelty in the form of training methods, welfare in the form of general animal care, and public safety.

The anti-training argument seeks to exploit a general misunderstanding of ethology (animal behavior) and animal psychology, coupled with a general reluctance on the part of trainers themselves to openly discuss "correction" as a tool in training. All animal interactions depend on social hierarchy. Behavioral terms like "Alpha male" have become a part of our every day speech, but the role of "dominance" as a social concept between species is poorly misunderstood by the public at large, and repudiated by liberationists. The Nobel Prize winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz clearly illustrated the role of dominance in social hierarchies in his widely read work On Aggression. In simple terms, no one can really successfully train an animal that believes itself to be socially superior to the trainer. Nor raise a child for that matter. In the early days of wild animal training dominance was asserted by trainers, often violently. But even when Bostwick wrote his thesis on training for the circus, in 1904 the concept of "reward" for good behavior, as well as "correction" for bad behavior was widely understood. When working with captive born/captive raised animals that have to some extent "imprinted" on humans the severity of necessary corrections may in theory decrease. Every animal will sometimes test the status quo of dominance and require correction.

Correction is not cruel. If I burn a pan of meatloaf and in my frustration I kick my dog - that's cruelty. Yes, it's a social interaction, but what did the dog learn, except to hide under the bed? On the other hand if I use a training collar to put a hard correction on my dog when he lunges at the mail carrier, he's learned not to lunge at the mail carrier. The next day, when he doesn't lunge, and I reward him, he's received a positive reinforcement. As the trainer I am dominant in both social interactions - when I correct the dog for lunging, and when I reward him for not lunging.

Liberationists suggest that all animals in the circus live in fear all the time. To the contrary, Swiss zoologist Heini Hediger concludes in his seminal book "The Psychology of Animals in the Zoo and Circus", that training and performance generally relieves stress in captive animals and substitutes for natural "play." We shouldn't confuse "play" in childhood with "play" in animals. Animal play invariably includes dominance. Trained, performing animals are psychologically healthier than their untrained counter-parts, according to Hediger. In a career spanning sixty years as a professor of ethology and as director of the Basel Zoo, Hediger examined what the concept of "freedom" is in wild animals. His conclusions run counter to the philosophical ideology of Animal Liberation. (The Estonian marine scientist Aleksei Turovski says of Hediger's conclusions; "It is hard to believe in our time, but it seems that Heini Hediger (1908-1992) really was the first zoologist who realized that there is no such thing as an animal that is free in anthropomorphic sense: "the free animal does not live in freedom: neither in space nor as regards its behavior towards other animals (Hediger 1964). Animals in the wild are "bound by space and time, by sex and social status" (Hediger 1985). If we consider now that Hediger also elaborated on the distinction between nest and home, the former being a repository for eggs and raising the young" ... and the latter "a place of refuge, which is the function of the home, it becomes quite clear, for a zoologist at least, how Hediger approached the phenomena of animal life. He did it from within and in the context of the greater eco-system. Apparently there is no such thing as a "free population", to say nothing of "a free species". But a free animal could, perhaps, be usefully imagined as a healthy member of a healthy population of a certain species dwelling in such part of the land- or seascape which is safe from foes but promising in resources as far as this animal can recognize by its semiotic means within the range and limitations of its senses."

In "Man And Animal In The Zoo", Hediger posits that the same "freedom" an animal finds in the wild can be found to an even greater extent in captivity, so long as captive animals are provided with necessary sensory and psychological stimulus. Training and performance are a part of that stimulus.

The vulnerabilities that liberationists find in circus training are predicated on a deliberate misunderstanding of the training process, and on the flawed nature of some trainers themselves. To be fair, some trainers and animal handlers have been cruel in asserting and maintaining dominance or in administering correction. But that doesn't imply a pattern of systematic, constant abuse cited by activists. More often liberationists seek to take examples of correction and place them outside the context of overall training. Elephants are not offended by four letter words, but people viewing "secret" videotapes may focus on foul language and assume that language is synonymous with brutality.

Liberation activists suggest that that animal care protocols in all circuses fail to meet minimal regulatory standards - frequently citing APHIS reports to support their charges. In reality animal care practices in American circuses may be very good on one show and not so good on another, a situation similar to state of zoos prior to the advent of AZA certification guidelines. Constant review and improvement in animal care protocols have been a hallmark in American Zoo management. Longevity in mammals cited by William T Hornaday , the first director of the New York Zoological Society, and longevity's cited by Lee S. Crandall, a later director of the park and author of Wild Mammals in Captivity are markedly different and reflect those improvements. Today's longevities are far superior to Crandall's 1964 statistics, illustrating continued improvement. The majority of APHIS/AWA violations center on particular issues. Common issues involve maintenance of transportation equipment, medical records, and TB testing in elephants and elephant handlers. When a show is cited multiple times in a single season for the same bad taillight or exposed bolts in a trailer, all show people should be embarrassed. . Galius Julius Caesar said, "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." Pressure from APHIS, activists, and militant local inspection means that any show traveling with animals must remain alert for even minor regulatory violations. Meeting the minimal standards for A.W.A. compliance and local regulations simply may not be enough. By creating internal standards and adhering to animal care protocols that exceed those cited in regulatory standards shows can deflect much current criticism. Such new standards and protocols don't come cheap. Better transportation equipment, better temporary enclosures, larger cages, improved record keeping and enhanced animal health care and employee training simply aren't financially feasible of every show. For some shows it may be that camels are a better alternative to the expense of elephants. For other shows it might suggest that traveling with a mix of African and Asian elephants requires separate transports and enclosures to lessen the risk of cross species viral outbreaks. Possible a big cat act with three cats is better than an act with seven cats, if those three animals are afforded twice as much cage space as a result. Rather than capitulating to liberationist demands, efforts to negate their criticisms are well within the means of traditional shows. If a particular show owner simply can't or won't comply with reasonable standards and regulations, or when a historical failure to comply results in pulling a show's exhibitor's license; it may be that show shouldn't have animals - even leased from a third party. Just as there is no good excuse for transporting animals across the desert southwest in summer months without adequate ventilation and/or climate control, the actions of any one show should not be allowed to darken the reputations of show that do work hard to care for their animals. The efforts that circuses like Ringling and Carson & Barnes have made in captive elephant reproduction are noteworthy and match the best efforts by zoos in species survival. As noted earlier, groups like PeTA, or PAWS offer no alternative means to protect highly endangered species in vulnerable habitats from extinction. Moreover OABA statistics suggest that most elephants attached to American circuses are middle-aged animals with a longer life-expectancy than the captive population as a whole, while DVM Ted Friend's research indicates that physical conditioning in working elephants is superior to that of their non-working/ non-performing counterparts.

Liberationists are no kinder in their view of zoos and aquariums. Visit PeTA's website devoted to zoos. PeTA calls even world class zoos with outstanding research facilities "Pitiful Prisons." The same liberationists dismiss captive breeding for species survival, stating: "The purpose of most zoos' research is to find ways to breed and maintain more animals in captivity. If zoos ceased to exist, so would the "need" for most of their research." As for education, the activists believe, "Zoos teach people that it is acceptable to interfere with animals and keep them locked up in captivity." Captive management successes have brought back species like the blackfooted ferret, the red wolf, and the California Condor from the brink of extinction, then reintroduced them into the wild. Success carries no weight with activists. Groups like In Defense of Animals actively picket zoos, and liberationists seek to infiltrate organizations involved in zoo policy and management much as they have infiltrated mainstream animal welfare bodies. The Detroit Zoo, increasingly "activist friendly" recently broke with scientific management's plans for Asian Elephants, choosing to close their exhibit and ship their animals to PAWS in California rather than allowing those animals to join a successful breeding program at another accredited AZA member park participating in the elephant Species Survival Plan. The five year old PAWS "Ark 2000" sanctuary is already at odds with at least some of its neighbors, embroiled in suits and counter-suits in the courts of Calaveras and Sacramento Counties, going so far as to sue the owner of the local newspaper the Calaveras County Daily News.

Nowhere does the case against circus fall apart more than in the work of Dr Marthe Kiley-Worthington, a highly respected behaviorist and University lecturer commissioned in 1989 by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to conduct an independent examination of the lives of circus animals, their care, and training. The close ties between RSPCA and liberation are well noted. In the introduction to her findings Kiley-Worthington writes:

"The easiest target for the ever-growing band of Animal Welfarists has been circuses. They are a minority with no very articulate or powerful representation, and they have wild animals as well as domestic ones. They exist only to entertain, not to feed people or to save endangered species, and they make the animals do undignified things. It was, unlike fishing, or intensive farming, or certain types of pet keeping, a simple case: circuses were just wrong and ought to be stopped. However, it proved difficult to argue that the animals were physically in poor health, so it seemed that information must be accumulated on their psychological ill-health in order to strengthen the case against them..."

Surprisingly, at least to liberationists, Kiley-Worthington discovered that in-point-of-fact circus animals were not generally ill-treated, ill-trained, or psychologically unhealthy. After three thousand hours of investigation and observation over several years she says:

"Animal welfare organizations have argued that circuses by their nature cause suffering and distress to animals. They have also argued that, even if this were shown not to be the case, animals should not be used to entertain human beings, particularly if they are in the process made to look absurd as this undermines humans respect for them. These are points that have been considered carefully. The conclusion is that they are invalid..."

Further Kiley-Worthington states:

"It is therefore irrational to take a stand against circuses on grounds that the animals in circuses necessarily suffer, unless they are to take the same stand against zoos, stables, race horses, kennels, pets and all other animal-keeping systems."

Which is exactly what animal liberation is really about.

Liberation groups have worked tirelessly to prevent parks like the San Diego Zoo from importing new elephants from Africa to increase genetic diversity, in keeping with SSP and Elephant Managers Association recommendations. Liberationists say they favor saving wild elephants but fail to seriously fund major initiatives with that goal in mind. Again, extinction appears preferable to conservation according to liberation doctrine.

In the area of public safety liberationists have scored some successes in prohibiting animal performances in approximately twenty communities around the United States, and Elephant or Camel rides and encounters in a handful of States. As noted before in discussing PAWS safety campaigns, there is no real evidence to justify these bans. By comparison, a visit to websites like rideaccidents.com reveals numerous amusement ride injuries annually and occasionally fatalities even at the very best facilities. Most reasonable people would agree that while there may be some small risk associated with amusement rides, given already strict regulation and inspection there is no justification for prohibiting such rides. The same reasonable consideration should be afforded to circuses or zoos.

"Despite trade in ivory being illegal since 1990, the world continues to see the seizure of illegal hauls," said Bell. "The black market demand for ivory is insatiable, and opening up a legal trade will only provide a cover and a market for illegal ivory products and encourage the poaching of elephants."

This article reprinted with permission of the author: B.E.Trumble -- 2005