SHARK Rebuts Pro-NHSFR Propaganda
The State Journal-Register, Springfield's dominant newspaper, completely failed to offer balanced reporting prior and during the 2006 National High School Finals Rodeo. When the rodeo came to Springfield, the Journal-Register, an NHSFR sponsor, printed article after article of glowing rodeo propaganda. The following is a transparently biased Journal-Register article that looks at the issue of animal abuse and injuries within rodeo by giving a platform to the disinformation put out by the rodeo industry. Read on to learn "the rest of the story".
Horns of the matter:
What rights groups call mistreatment, others say is natural
July 20, 2006
Liz Wagner, Correspondent
The State Journal-Register
Reality-checks and rebuttals courtesy of SHARK are highlighted in the red boxes
Accompanying the National High School Finals Rodeo to Springfield will be an ongoing debate about the treatment of animals used in the rodeo.
There really isn’t a debate. There are animal protection groups with hundreds of hours of video documentation supported by still pictures showing cruelty, injuries and deaths. As is proven by this article, the only opposition from the rodeo industry comes by way of lies, fabricated statistics, and other thoroughly discredited propaganda.
Animal rights groups have strong opinions on what they see as ill treatment of the animals. But rodeo participants say they pride themselves on taking good care of the animals that make their sport possible.
The rodeo industry either holds or is associated with events such as steer busting, calf roping, “wild horse” (they’re not wild), chuck wagon and suicide races that maim and kill more animals than the public will ever know. The Rodeo Mafia sees to it that people don’t know by not disclosing reports of injuries and deaths. Rodeo announcers ignore or outright lie about animal casualties. Rodeo stock contractors have gone so far as to parade a different animal out into the arena after an injured or dead animal has been removed, claiming the replacement animal to be the miraculously healed casualty.
Illinois Humane, an animal rights group that investigates reports of animal abuse, is one of the local organizations that disagrees with some of the activities that take place in rodeos.
“(The rodeo) is not something we, by any means, support,” said Jane McBride, president of Illinois Humane.
“You look at the treatment of the animals within rodeo events, and that’s certainly not something we tolerate on the streets. Animals just do not buck and toss and do the things those animals do without aggravation,” McBride said.
Many of the animals involved in the rodeo are stock animals, which are not a category with which Illinois Humane usually is involved.
“We’re, of course, in a difficult position as a local organization,” McBride said. “Many of the animals used in rodeo are stock animals. They are not highly valued prize animals. They are not treated as you would an animal you might call your own.”
McBride argues that most people would object if a “valued animal” were treated the way stock animals are.
“I would hope that Springfield looks at this very critically and realizes what they’re hosting,” McBride said.
Steve Hindi, head of Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, an animal rights organization based in Geneva, has a long history with the National High School Rodeo Association. In 2000, Hindi and some fellow members of SHARK videotaped what they viewed as cruel treatment of animals during the national finals. This year, Hindi said he has his camera ready once again.
Hindi also has a problem with the way Illinois government handled the process of convincing the rodeos to return to Springfield. He believes that the state’s involvement reflects poorly on Illinois.
“The whole…thing stinks, and it’s going to put Illinois in a bad light,” Hindi said. “I know, because I’m one of the people who’s going to make sure it happens.”
“I think we need to show (the rodeo) for what it is,” he added.
Of course, the NHSRA has its own views on such accusations.
“We have had an animal committee for nearly 40 years,” said Kent Sturman, NHSRA’s executive director. “We have many rules in our book that ensure the humane and responsible treatment of animals. We severely reprimand members who break those rules.”
If the NHSRA, or any other rodeo association “severely reprimanded members” who break the rules, SHARK wouldn’t continue to find the same violations over and over. The same violations the violations we found in 2000 and 2001, when the high school rodeo finals were last held in Illinois, were found again in 2006. Furthermore, the NHSRA does not publicize the supposed disciplines handed out. Why would that be? We believe it is because the fines and/or suspensions are nonexistent. Otherwise the NHSRA would want the public to know that they weren’t kidding about humane rules.
True sporting associations are transparent. Even the boxing industry, which is constantly plagued with charges of corruption, publicizes fines, suspensions and other penalties for violators. Of course, how can any activity claim to be a sport when half of its participants (the animals) don’t want to be there?
If protestors do appear, “We just present the facts and truth to those who want to listen and those who want information,” he said. “We have no interest in preventing them from exercising their constitutional right (to protest).”
Perhaps the NHSRA doesn’t mind people protesting, but they sure get upset when SHARK investigators videotape. This includes everything from standing in front of videocams to harassment and attempted intimidation.
NHSRA animal welfare statistics for 2004, reported on the group’s Web site, found that in 36 states reporting, a total of 12 injuries to animals occurred during 22,273 competitive runs. Two animals died, the group said.
This is a terrific example of rodeo propaganda. If animal injuries and deaths in the NHSRA is as low as it claims, why aren’t there public injury/death reports for every animal casualty? Instead, the rodeo claims 36 reporting states without saying which states, and which rodeos, and with animals, and what happened to them in the end.
These are phony statistics thrown together to fool fools. The editorial staff of the Journal-Register should be ashamed for printing this garbage. However, since the Journal-Register continues to sponsor the rodeo year after year, even though every year there is another cruelty expose is more than sufficient evidence that the paper is just a minion of the Rodeo Mafia.
“With regards to the daily humane report from the 2004 National High School Finals Rodeo, the total number of culls throughout the rodeo was six out of 4,054 rodeo runs,” the Web site stated.
Again, these are fabricated statistics, not reports. However, just to play along for the moment, the NHSRA asks that we believe that there were 12 injuries and two deaths out of 22,273 “runs” during the 2004 season, but 6 injuries out of 4,054 “runs" during the 2004 NHSRA finals. That is an approximately four-fold difference in the percentage of injuries! In any case, both sets of statistics are completely false and unfounded.
You may wonder what a “run” is. The NHSRA and other rodeo associations purposely use this term to confuse people. The rodeo considers every animal that enters the arena for any reason to be “a run.” That means if the rodeo clown has a dog act, the dog is a run. When a bucking horse comes out of a chute it is three runs, because there are two pickup men on horses also. When a bull comes out of a chute there are three runs because of the pickup men, and so on. Again, this is meant to confuse people.
The NHSRA, along with the co-chairs of the rodeo’s veterinary committee, Dr. Karl Luthin and Dr. John O’Keefe, have made preparations in case of an accident.
“We have an animal ambulance along with a people ambulance,” O’Keefe said. “The last two years the rodeo was here, we didn’t have to use (the animal ambulance) at all.”
This isn’t exactly true. There were numerous injured animals at the finals during 2000 and 2001 in Illinois. A calf was crippled, and an animal ambulance should have been used to take the calf out. Instead, three thugs hauled the calf out like so much garbage. One thug held the injured baby by its head, the second thug held the calf by the rope, and the third thug held the calf by the rope that was tied around its legs, one of which was injured. Click here to see video footage of that injury.
This was not the proper way to treat an injured animal, and it even violates the NHSRA’s own rules which require that an injured animal be removed with a conveyance. So while an animal ambulance wasn’t used, it should have been used. Nice try Dr. O’Keefe. SHARK is certainly thankful that none of the nonhumans in our families are under your care!
Nonsense. Many rodeo horses are bought cheaply at animal auctions.
“They don’t have to be injured or caused pain to make them buck,” O’Keefe said. “They breed those animals to have hair-trigger tempers. These are animals that are essentially throwing a temper tantrum.”
If we take Dr. O’Keefe at his word, he just admitted that the animals have been prodded into rage. That is a violation of the Illinois Humane Care for Animals Act. However, the rodeo need not fear, because the agency charged with enforcing Illinois humane laws is the Department of Agriculture – an incompetent, corrupt and impotent entity.
However, the rodeo does add one thing that affects the performance of the animals. “They do have a cinch on them, back behind the saddle, that they tighten up. But it’s not a painful thing; it’s an irritating thing,” O’Keefe said.
The innocent sounding “cinch” Dr. O’Keefe references is actually called a buck strap, also known as a flank strap. It is in fact extremely tormenting to a horse. Many horses “buck blind” from the buck strap, meaning they buck right into gates and fences. Some horses are injured and some are killed.
Another concern voiced by some animals rights organizations is the practice of twisting tails. O’Keefe explained that it makes calves uncomfortable but doesn’t hurt them.
This is a lie. The tail is an extension of the spine, and to suggest that twisting it doesn’t hurt is ludicrous.
O’Keefe also said that steer wrestling, where cowboys hold a steer by the horns and twist its head to make it fall, does not harm the steer.
Many a steer has suffered a broken neck from steer wrestling. Dr. O’Keefe is either purposely lying or well past his years of competency.
“You are flipping him on the ground, but we do that. We wrestle each other all the time in football and all those other sports,” he said.
It is outrageous to suggest a parallel between what occurs between willing human athletes in legitimate sports, and what is inflicted upon unwilling animals in rodeo is just one example of the propaganda of the Rodeo Mafia. These people are either delusional, pathological liars, or both. SHARK believes the last choice to be the case.
Illinois Humane, SHARK and the Animal Protective League also all oppose the use of electric prods on the animals.
However, O’Keefe said, “You won’t find a (shock) prod on a show or rodeo floor.”
This is yet another outright and absolute lie. We found plenty of prods, although we undoubtedly didn’t catch all of the instances, and perhaps not even most of them. We documented the instances we caught on videotape and with still pictures. Dr. O’Keefe is a perfect example of a rodeo veterinarian as a person who uses their skills not to enhance animal care, but rather, to provide cover for the animal abusers in the Rodeo Mafia.
The state, via the Department of Agriculture, also is taking steps to be sure the animals have food and water are not mistreated.
If there was any comedy to be found in this pitiful article, it was in this last paragraph. The Illinois Department of Agriculture is an impotent, incompetent and corrupt servant of the Rodeo Mafia. Department of Agriculture Director Chuck Hartke was in the announcer’s booth during the rodeo professing his love for it while at the same time SHARK investigators were in the stands documenting violations to the Illinois Humane Care for Animals Act that his department is supposed to enforce. Many rodeo animal victims were denied shelter from the oppressive summer sun (which the rodeo thugs hid from under any shade they could find), denied water, denied prompt veterinary attention (assuming they got any at all), and were subjected to extensive cruelty that violated both rodeo’s supposed humane rules (which exist for public relations purposes only), and state law.
It should be noted that SHARK president Steve Hindi, and presumably the other animal protection representatives, gave the Journal-Register much more information and evidence than was used in this article.
As for Dr. O’Keefe, SHARK president Steve Hindi extends an open invitation to debate the rodeo issue, and to respond to our charges of his numerous and egregious misstatements in this article. Don’t hold you breath waiting for the good doctor to accept. We predict that hell will freeze over long before Dr. O’Keefe is willing to be held accountable for his false claims.
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