This afternoon, Yaarab Shrine’s Potentate Robert Hampton and other members got a surprise during the closing celebration of the shrine’s annual circus season when PETA supporters disrupted the event by shouting, “End animal circus acts now! Stop abusing animals!” and unveiled signs that read, “Elephants Beaten and Chained for Shrine Circuses.” Shriners surrounded the peaceful protesters, grabbed them, and pushed them—even though they were proceeding to leave as asked. Shriner thugs then blocked the protesters’ car, preventing their departure until police arrived and allowed them to leave. Photos and video footage of the disruption are available here.
The Yaarab Shrine Circus is one of the last remaining circus shows that still use wild animals who are confined to small crates, kept in shackles, and deprived of any semblance of a natural life. It has partnered with notoriously cruel exhibitors, including Carson & Barnes Circus, which has been cited for more than 100 violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act and whose head trainer was caught on video attacking elephants with bullhooks—weapons resembling a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end.
“PETA is determined to see the day when the Shriners agree that elephants are to be respected, not chained, beaten, or forced to perform in circus shows that are cruel and outdated,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “We’re upping the ante in urging Yaarab Shrine to stop promoting big-time cruelty under the big top.”
On Monday, Yaarab Shrine will host a party for members with summer birthdays—including Hampton—and to mark the occasion, PETA supporters in poop costumes will make a stink outside and deliver a cake that reads, “Robert Hampton, Stop Treating Animals Like Crap.” The back-to-back party disruptions are an escalation of efforts to persuade Shriners to cut the cruelty from all chapters’ circuses, following Moolah Shrine’s announcement that it dropped elephant acts.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Today, PETA supporters at the Canton Repository Grand Parade, which featured NFL Hall of Famers, hopped a barricade of spectators and marched behind the Budweiser Clydesdales’ entourage with a large banner demanding that Anheuser-Busch stop amputating horses’ tailbones. The protesters carried the banner behind the Clydesdales for six blocks over the course of 20 minutes, until police escorted them away from the parade route. Video footage and photos of the disruption are available here.
As PETA recently revealed in a damning video exposé, Budweiser has been severing Clydesdales’ tailbones—either with a scalpel or with a tight band that stops the blood supply to the tail, causing it to die and fall off—just so they’ll look a certain way when hitched to a beer wagon. Tailbone amputation for cosmetic reasons is condemned by the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Equine Practitioners and is illegal in 10 states and a number of countries. The practice causes immense pain, affects horses’ balance, and removes their first line of defense against biting and disease-spreading insects.
“Paradegoers now know that the Budweiser Clydesdales’ tailbones have been chopped off by Anheuser-Busch to sell beer,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Security can force PETA out of the parade, but it can’t stop the world from finding out that Budweiser has blood on its cans.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
It’s the first anniversary of the liberation of Mabel and nearly 4,000 other beagles from laboratory supplier Envigo’s now-shuttered dog-breeding factory following a PETA undercover investigation, and to celebrate, the group is releasing a new video and a photo album showing Mabel’s year of “firsts” in a happy home.
For almost seven years, Mabel, one of the most senior dogs at Envigo, was intensively confined to a concrete-and-metal cage, surrounded by hundreds of other caged, stressed dogs and their desperate, deafening barks around the clock. But following PETA’s investigation, Mabel was one of 25 beagles transferred to the group’s shelter to be adopted into loving homes—and since her adoption by PETA staffer Natalie Hawkins and her husband, Charles Long, every day has been an adventure: She joins Natalie at the office, where she loves watching seagulls and squirrels through the window; frolics on the beach; and even tucks into the occasional vegan sushi roll on “date night” (at a dog-friendly restaurant, of course)—and the couches and bed are hers to cuddle on (no more concrete floor!). And her guardians are enjoying Mabel’s newly revealed playful side: She had never even seen a toy at Envigo, but now she delights in carrying her toy box around (and cheerfully destroying any discarded papers that come her way, too).
“Having gone from a crowded, chaotic laboratory breeding mill to a safe and caring home, Mabel is now a beloved family member who will never be bred, caged, or exploited again,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA urges everyone to help other animals like Mabel who are still suffering in the experimentation industry by checking labels, avoiding products that were tested on animals, and urging lawmakers to hold neglectful facilities accountable.”
PETA’s investigation into Envigo revealed thousands of beagles warehoused in factory farm sheds. Female dogs were bred repeatedly for years, with many forced to give birth on the hard floor. Dogs were denied veterinary care and/or subjected to painful procedures by unqualified people. Hundreds died. After PETA’s investigation broke, federal law-enforcement officials seized nearly 450 dogs and puppies in “acute distress,” Envigo’s parent company announced that it would close the facility, and a federal court approved the U.S. Department of Justice’s plan to remove all surviving dogs so that they could be adopted—one was even adopted by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. And Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed five beagle-protection bills that PETA had lobbied for into law.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and encourages anyone disturbed by these dogs’ suffering to do their part to dismantle the animal experimentation industry by shopping smart. A resource for cruelty-free brands and products is available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Why are viewers baffled—for the wrong reason—by a viral video showing a standing sun bear at a Chinese zoo? They’re so concerned about whether the exploited bear is real or a disguised human that they’ve completely missed the deeper problem behind the scenes: The abuse of bears in entertainment is speciesist and cruel—and it must be stopped.
The Alleged Abuse Endured by Angela, the Sun Bear at a Chinese Zoo
The petite Malayan sun bear receiving so much attention is named Angela. She’s a living, feeling being, but humans have subverted her natural autonomy and very likely forced her, through painful training, to stand on her hind legs for long hours every day. Seedy circus trainers dump many sun bears like Angela at zoos in China after years of agonizing abuse. And it isn’t just China: The same circus-training torment and eventual handover to zoos occur internationally.
Although Angela appeared to wave at visitors while standing, the gesture and posture more likely suggest bodily distortion from a life of crammed confinement. Rather than persistent and uninformed online speculation about whether Angela is “fake,” the conversation should shift to exposing the abuse of bears like her who are exploited for entertainment in China and around the globe.
After the video went viral, Hangzhou Zoo began denying social-media rumors that Angela was a costumed human at the end of July. The zoo is now reportedly attracting about 20,000 spectators each day who crowd around Angela’s enclosure to gawk and wonder—all the while ignoring the cruelty she has endured and doing nothing to end it.
PETA knows this zoo takes in animals formerly used by circuses. When bears are no longer useful to the circus industry—often because they have become older and more aggressive—they’re discarded at zoos. Angela very likely used to be forced to perform circus tricks. Trainers probably compelled her to learn to stand, a common form of exploitation in circuses worldwide.
Sun bears, who are native to Southeast Asia’s tropical forests, are the world’s smallest bear species. They sport amber-colored fur patches shaped like crescents on their chests. They also have long tongues, which are useful for extracting honey from beehives.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists sun bears as “vulnerable,” and the bears’ mother country, Malaysia, deems them a protected species. Yet poachers and deforestation threaten their wild population, which has fallen by 35% over the past 30 years.
What Lies Behind Many Sun Bears Dumped at Chinese Zoos
A PETA Asia investigator visited 10 of the more than 300 circuses and animal-training facilities in Suzhou, China, and what this eyewitness uncovered was heartrending. Angela could even have been one of the cubs shown in PETA’s video.
Workers chained bear cubs by their necks and tethered them to a wall, which forced them to remain upright, sometimes for hours on end, in order to train them to walk on their hind legs.
Their spirits were broken. They quickly learned that no matter how tired and scared they felt, they had to stand or they could choke or hang themselves.
Trainers even tethered some bears upright inside cages.
These young bears reached for each other in what appeared to be an attempt to comfort one another.
“Over the long term that causes permanent joint damage or even necrosis and paralysis. … [T]he animals often acquire these problems in their youth, meaning they suffer for the rest of their lives.”
—Jin Yipeng, deputy professor of veterinary medicine at China Agricultural University
Workers tethered some bear cubs by a short rope to a hook in the ground, making it impossible to move more than a few inches in any direction.
Trainers also forced bears to jump over objects, walk on their hands, and perform other confusing tricks.
The bears repeatedly resisted, but trainers yanked on their neck ropes, dragged them, grabbed them by the fur on their backs, yelled at them, and forced them to continue. If they made a mistake, they were hit with a stick.
Workers pierced the snouts of some of the bears with metal rings, often without painkillers—then tied ropes to the rings to lead the animals around.
When bears weren’t forced to perform, trainers crammed them into barren metal cages.
They cried out, pawing and biting at the bars, desperate to escape.
How You Can Help Bears Forced to Perform
No bear—or any other animal—should be exploited for entertainment. Don’t support this cruel industry. Pledge to help bears and other animals today:
Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo regarding the citation issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) for a critical violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act:
In a just-posted inspection report (IR), U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors cited Virginia Tech after unqualified staff failed—for an entire week—to notice the plight of ailing gerbils until two died without veterinary care and a third was so critically ill that he had to be euthanized. Two survivors required emergency care.
This development follows another critical citation pertaining to an incident documented in an IR in January, in which an untrained person squeezed a gerbil so tightly to restrain the animal for a blood draw that they—according to the university’s own documents—“cut off the gerbil’s ability to draw breath.” That animal also had to be euthanized. In that same IR, inspectors also cited Virginia Tech for failing to include gerbils in its annual census. These animals were slated to be used in a “pain category E” experiment, meaning that they would be subjected to procedures causing pain or distress with no pain relief.
Virginia Tech vigorously lobbied against bills introduced during the Commonwealth’s 2023 General Assembly session that would have implemented additional penalties and fines for critical violations as well as increasing transparency and requiring annual census reports of animals used in experiments who are not covered by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA). As a gesture of good faith and in an effort to understand the university’s strong opposition to measures aiming to achieve compliance with the AWA, one of the bills, SB 1230 (Stanley R-20), was passed by for the year. At Sen. William M. Stanley Jr.’s request, senators Chapman Petersen (D-34) and David Marsden (D-37), who chair the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Companion Animals, respectively, sent a letter to the president of Virginia Tech, seeking answers to a series of questions about the school’s animal welfare violations and plans to prevent future ones. The university’s response to the letter can be found here.
Virginia Tech has amassed five critical violations in just three years, including for the death by starvation of a piglet, failing to render aid to a calf, and multiple violations involving the care of gerbils. It’s past time for the university to redirect its resources toward modern, non-animal research methods that will actually help humans. We urge officials there to adopt PETA’s Research Modernization Deal.
Background According to documents obtained by PETA through public records requests, 24 gerbils who were only 6 to 8 weeks old were used in experiments in which they were infected with different strains of a virus causing them pain from which they would be given no relief. They would be allowed to suffer until they experienced labored breathing, severely unkempt coats, severe hunching, and poor responsiveness and would be unable to stand, at which point they would be killed. In a second study, 14 pregnant gerbils would be killed at 24 days into their pregnancy and their fetuses would be removed and decapitated.
