TONIGHT IN GREENVILLE: Residents Protest Carson & Barnes Circus

TONIGHT IN GREENVILLE:  Residents Protest Carson & Barnes Circus

Elephants Taken From Wild As Babies Forced To Perform

Greenville, Miss. – In Defense of Animals, animal advocates and concerned citizens will join to protest the Carson & Barnes Circus, which opens at the Greenville Mall tonight. Information will be distributed about the inherent cruelty of using animals in circuses, where they are brutally trained to perform unnatural tricks, chained and confined to small cages and pens, and trucked around the country for months each year.

What: Protest at Carson & Barnes Circus

Where: Greenville Mall, 1651 Highway 1 South, Greenville, MS.

When: Wednesday, April 14, 4:30 p.m.

Carson & Barnes Circus forces various wild animals to perform unnatural tricks, including elephants, who in the wild walk tens of miles a day and live in large, tight-knit family groups in which female offspring remain with their mothers for life. In contrast, circuses cruelly separate calves from their mothers at less than two years of age and train them through pain, prolonged confinement and physical punishment.

The Circus is notorious for its appearance on an undercover video in which elephant trainer Tim Frisco instructs employees on how to train elephants. In it, he states: “Don’t touch ‘em. Hurt ‘em! Make ’em scream. When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention. If you’re scared to hit ‘em, don’t come into the barn. You can’t do it on the road. I’m not gonna touch her in front of a thousand people.”

Like all circuses, Carson & Barnes dominates elephants through dominance and physical punishment meted out with the bullhook, steel-tipped device similar to a fireplace poker used to prod, hook, stab, strike and threaten elephants into obedience. These abuses typically occur out of public view.

For more information, please visit: www.helpelephants.com

MEDIA ADVISORY

April 14, 2010

Contact: Doll Stanley (650) 248-4893
Deb Robinson, 860-836-7761