Portland, Ore. (August 31, 2010) – This Thursday, Oregon members of In Defense of Animals (IDA) will join other concerned citizens to protest the opening night of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Portland. Ringling has been embroiled in controversy over its brutal treatment of elephants, including calves ripped away from their mothers for violent training solely for “entertainment.”

What: Protest of Ringling Bros. Circus opening night in Portland. Activists will hold banners and signs, distribute leaflets, and show undercover video of Ringling’s animal abuse with a mobile Gorilla Theater Cart.

When: Thursday, September 2, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

Where: Rose Garden Arena, One Center Court, Portland, Ore. 97227 – South side of the Rose Garden Arena, near NE Multnomah St. Street

Ringling trainers routinely prod, hook, jab and strike elephants with a bullhook, a steel-tipped device similar to a fireplace poker that is used to control the large animals and force them to perform unnatural tricks. These abuses typically occur out of public view.

Evidence including court documents, undercover videos, and photos of training sessions with baby elephants shows that Ringling:

·     Routinely chains elephants in train box cars for more than 26 hours at a time and for as long as 60 to 100 hours without a break while traveling across the country for weeks at a time.

·     Physically abuses elephants with electric shock devices and bullhooks, including one elephant who was “dripping blood all over the arena floor from being hooked.”

·     Trains baby elephants through isolation from other elephants, prolonged restraint (tying their legs) and hitting with bullhooks. (A two-year-old calf, Aria, was chained nonstop for four months and only let off chains for 40 minutes a day during training.)

·     Chains elephants, who naturally walks tens of miles a day, at its Florida breeding facility for 16 to 22 hours a day.

For more information, please visit www.HelpElephants.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Matt Rossell, 503-890-5151, matt@idausa.org

Sacramento, Calif. (May 21, 2010) – Activists with In Defense of Animals (IDA), the Animal Protection and Rescue League (APRL), and Sacramento Animal Rights will be protesting outside of Firehouse Restaurant in Sacramento today at 6:00 p.m. against the sale of foie gras – diseased, enlarged livers from mistreated, force-fed ducks.

The activists will be displaying graphic banners showing scenes from inside foie gras farms.
What: Demonstration against foie gras
When: Friday, May 21, 6 p.m.
Where: Firehouse Restaurant, 1112 2nd St., Sacramento, CA 95814

To make the livers fat enough for foie gras, workers restrain the ducks, force long metal pipes down their throats, and pump up to two pounds of food into them per day. After three weeks, their livers swell up to 12 times their normal size.

“As a veterinarian, I find foie gras to be a disease rather than a delicacy,” said Elliot Katz, DVM, President of IDA. “The liver’s function is to process toxins, and a liver in this grossly enlarged state from force feeding cannot function properly.”

“The conditions I witnessed at Hudson Valley Foie Gras are appalling,” states Bryan Pease, Esq., Board Chair of APRL. “In visiting there and other farms to document conditions, I saw ducks panting incessantly and showing great difficulty walking and breathing in the later stages of force feeding, and I saw trash barrels full of dead ducks killed by the process.”

Animal cruelty investigations by APRL and a lawsuit filed by APRL and IDA led to enactment of California Health & Safety Code section 25980, banning the sale or production of foie gras in California effective 2012. The cities of San Francisco, Berkeley, West Hollywood, Solana Beach and San Diego have passed resolutions in support of the ban.

In 2009, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau found that D’Artagnan, a major U.S. foie gras distributor, was engaging in false advertising by claiming the livers are not diseased and implying the animals are treated humanely.

More information is available at www.foie-gras-industry.com.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts: Linda Middlesworth 916-798-5516 graphside@aol.com
Bryan Pease (619) 723-0369 Bryan@APRL.org

When: Saturday, May 15, 2010, 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Where: Pier 39, San Francisco (at entrance, near Embarcadero and Stockton St.)

In permit applications, to comply with federal law, the ‘abusement’ parks emphasize “conservation” and “education” claiming the display of captive animals will enhance those efforts. But it is clear that selling entertainment, souvenirs and snacks are their primary goals.

“The dangerous, unnatural stunts these captive dolphins perform serve no educational purpose. In fact, these stunts and tricks teach the animals false behaviors that never occur in nature and give the viewing public a fake impression of marine mammals in a completely artificial environment,” said Melissa Gonzalez, IDA spokesperson. “Cruel confinement for public display of marine mammals, captured from the wild, separated from their families and forced to perform unnatural circus acts, does not provide any meaningful education about protecting marine mammals and conserving their habitats” she added.

Marine mammals suffer terribly in captivity and usually die decades before their wild counterparts. Captive dolphins frequently go blind, routinely endure ulcers, and suffer from skin problems caused by heavily chlorinated water. They can die from severe psychological stress, diseases exacerbated by the captive stress as well as self-inflicted injuries or those caused by accidents or confrontations with other confined animals. They are gentle creatures who use echolocation to communicate and source food. But in captivity their sound waves now bounce off the concrete walls. Keeping marine mammals in captivity is like confining a human being to a tiny room of mirrors for life. This is enough to drive such gentle animals insane and go neurotic. Hugo, a killer whale (Orca) captured from the wild and held at the Miami Seaquarium died of a brain aneurism after repeatedly ramming his head into the windows and walls of his extremely small tank.

Killer whales perish in captivity decades before their average life expectancy in the wild. Over the last two decades, 22 Killer Whales have died at SeaWorld aquaria alone, way before their life expectancy in the wild. The lives of people who interact with killer whales are at stake too. Among the 200 killer whales that have been held in captivity, 24 different killer whales have injured or killed their dolphin trainers. And the public are not safe as well. Four people from the visiting public have been killed in these aquarium public displays while zero people have been killed by killer whales in the wild.

In the past 16 years, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has allowed marine parks to self-regulate, with devastating effects to both marine mammals and the public. “It’s time the US Congress created and enforced stricter regulations to protect marine mammals in captivity and phased out their display in these ‘abusement’ parks like they did in United Kingdom, where marine mammals are no longer held for public display” said IDA’s Executive Director, Anand Ramanathan. “As a first step, Congress must stop marine parks from forcing animals to perform for food, stop captive breeding and enforce the ban on capture or acquisition of any marine mammal from the wild for public display” he added.

IDA has been a founding member of the Save Japan Dolphin Campaign upon which Academy Award winning film, The Cove is based. The film highlights the horrific drive hunt fishery operations in Japan that is fueled by the ‘abusement’ marine park industry’s quest to replenish captive dolphin populations for circus-style shows and swim-with-dolphin attractions worldwide.  IDA is committed to ending the capture from the wild, breeding and harassment of marine mammals for aquarium public display and slaughter of thousands of whales, dolphins, and porpoises for human consumption in Japan.

For more information, please visit www.idausa.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Melissa Gonzalez, 707-981-7701, Melissa@idausa.org

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

This is the third year of a three-year sea lion killing plan approved by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Oregon Department Fish & Wildlife spokeswoman Jessica Sall. Officials will reevaluate the situation at the end of the year to determine if they will ask for an extension.

Officials said 80 sea lions currently meet the criteria to be euthanized. Twenty-five sea lions were killed during the first two years of the operation.

Matt Rossell, who is with In Defense of Animals, a group that opposes the project, attended the demonstration.

“It’s painful to see these sea lions killed needlessly,” he said.

Rossell said state leaders are ignoring the dam itself and over-fishing as possible causes for dwindling salmon numbers.

“When you really look at what’s happening here, it’s not working, it’s not helping the issue, it’s not saving and protecting salmon. The sea lions are being scapegoated,” Rossell said.

Some fishermen have differing opinions.

“It seems that they’re multiplying too much, there are too many. They should kill them because they are destroying the fish,” said Alex Jay.

Read the entire article here.