Is rodeo a tribute to the Wild West or cruel exploitation?

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Is rodeo a tribute to the Wild West or cruel exploitation?

By Brooke Bryant

Staff Writer

 

LIVERMORE -- On the hard-packed dirt of the Robertson Park arena, cowboys

wrestled, roped and rode their way through Friday morning's slack

competition at the Livermore Rodeo.

To the men in the arena and the handful of spectators in the sun-baked

stands, it was sport, a noble contest of strength and guile, a tribute to a

vanishing lifestyle and the heritage of the Old West.

 

But to some, it's simply cruel.

 

" Sport to me implies willing participants equally matched, " said Eric Mills,

a longtime rodeo critic. " That is not rodeo. ... The animals do not choose

to be there. "

 

Animal welfare organizations, from the Humane Society of the United States

to the more militant People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, agree.

Though they have issues with all rodeo events from bronc' busting to bull

riding, the activists particularly oppose events like calf roping and steer

wrestling.

 

But rodeo enthusiasts bristle at the notion that what they do in the ring is

inhumane.

 

" The animals in rodeo have the life of a star, " said Linda Burdick,

executive director of Friends of Rodeo, an advocacy and educational group

that supports rodeo. " They don't need to be saved. "

 

Burdick and other rodeo fans say that the sport is just an extension of

natural animal behavior and common ranching chores. Horses and cows buck on

the open range, just as in the arena, and calves need to be caught and roped

for branding.

 

" Everyone has to work for a living, " Burdick said. " These animals get top

feed, regular veterinary care, they are respected and well cared for. When

they're in the arena, they work a maximum of eight seconds. "

 

The rules that govern rodeos -- set by the state, the county and the

sanctioning organization -- are designed to keep both the animals and the

cowboys safe, according to proponents. The Professional Rodeo Cowboys

Association, the sport's sanctioning body, has about 60 rules and

regulations pertaining to the training, handling and treatment of the

animals.

 

Spurs must be dull, and roll freely so they don't rake the flanks of the

animals; animals must be inspected before events, and cannot be confined to

vehicles for longer than 24 hours without being fed, watered and unloaded;

incidents of abuse can be punished by disqualification and fines starting at

$250.

 

But differing definitions of abuse are part of the rodeo debate.

 

Rodeo opponents say that the equipment that is intrinsic to rodeo activities

-- electric prods and flank straps -- are equivalent to tools of torture.

 

But participants maintain that they are merely tools of the trade. They say

the prods produce mild shocks and are used sparingly, and the

much-misunderstood flank straps -- which do not touch the animals genitals

-- don't cause serious pain, just encourage an animal's tendency to buck.

 

The PRCA also requires a veterinarian to be on-site for every rodeo event it

sanctions -- a condition that already is law in Alameda County, and is being

considered at the state level. Current California law stipulates that a vet

must be on-call and able to respond within an hour.

 

" We always look at California to start some of the more progressive ideas, "

said Ellen Buck, a veterinarian and the Humane Society's director of equine

protection. " There are some laws that are certainly a step in the right

direction. "

 

Some cities have started to drop events like calf roping, Buck said, but

predicted that getting others to follow suit would be a long, uphill battle,

particularly in the central states and some of the western states.

 

" It's really firmly entrenched in some of the communities, " she said.

 

Mills, who runs the Oakland-based Action for Animals, has been lobbying hard

for the passage of the California bill, sponsored by Sen. Don Perata,

D-Oakland.

 

" Every rodeo has ambulances for cowboys, " he said. " If you can do this for

the cowboys, who are there by choice, why in God's name do you not provide

the same service for the animals who are not there by choice? "

 

Rodeo proponents say that the law is unnecessary, because of the low injury

rate, redundant, since most big rodeos already require that -- and if

lawmakers keep piling new rules on the rodeos, they could be legislated

right out of existence.

 

They also chafe at the requirement that rodeo organizers notify animal

control agencies two weeks prior to an event, asserting that will only give

the animal activists more time to prepare.

 

In a 2000 survey, the PRCA said that of 57 rodeos surveyed, only 38 animal

injuries were reported. That means that only .00052 percent of the 71,743

" animal exposures " resulted in injury.

 

Another way to look at it is that there was an average of about one injury

for every two rodeos, Mills countered.

 

" That is an appalling statistic, " he claimed.

 

One entry in the long list of rodeo-related animal injuries and deaths that

activists cite -- ranging from fractured skulls to broken necks -- comes

from the Livermore Rodeo itself. In 2000, a bucking horse died after

breaking its neck in the arena.

 

But Burdick said that growing up on a cattle ranch, she saw more accidents

in everyday life than in the rodeo. Injured animals get immediate treatment

from on-site vets, as well as animal handlers who move quickly to keep an

animal from further injuring itself.

 

" An animal that's in the rodeo that incurs an accidental injury is probably

one of the luckiest animals in the world, that he is in the rodeo, " she

said.

 

 

 

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