Gathering Place
By Cathy Goeggel
Why boycott the
50th State Fair?Year after year, the 50th State Fair has promoted animal abuse by booking traveling animal acts. These acts do not educate or demonstrate an appreciation of animals and their behavior -- in fact, they debase animals as objects of ridicule.
This year, it is a chimpanzee act that includes a pony. Animal Rights Hawaii (ARH) has video footage of the act. Chimps --our closest relations, with a 99 percent match of human DNA -- are dressed in stupid costumes and forced to perform actions that are not characteristic to chimpanzees.
Performing animals are routinely beaten behind the scenes to force them to do unnatural behaviors, such as riding a horse. They live miserable lives, being transported around the country from carnival to fair to circus. Often their only escape from small cages is to perform.
Year after year, we have seen a sad procession of muzzled bears forced to dance, miserable tigers made to do silly tricks, sharks in cramped tanks, racing piglets whose fate is death when they are no longer small and cute.
ARH has asked the Honolulu Jaycees to stop sponsoring animal acts; they refused. We introduced legislation in both the Honolulu City Council and the state Legislature to ban traveling animal shows. Although there was great public support for those bills, they were defeated with the help of industry lobbyists.
ARH has followed the checkered careers of animal pimps who recently brought their slaves to Hawaii. Gil Castillo, a k a Kachunga the Alligator Wrestler in 1996, followed up his reptile act the following year in Hawaii with a display of wild animals and was cited for violation of federal law, including possession of an endangered eagle without proper permits.
Tim Rivers (Diving Mule Act, 1997) was convicted of illegally transporting endangered animals to members of an animal killing ring (leopards, lions, tigers, cougars and black bears were routinely shot in their cages for their skins and meat). Operation Snow Plow, a multistate federal investigation into the illegal exotic animal trade, resulted in the indictment and conviction of Rivers, along with a number of his cronies.
He was sentenced to jail and paid a hefty fine. Some of the animals were slaughtered at the 5-H Ranch in Cape Girardeau, Mo. 5-H bought a number of animals from Molokai Ranch when its exotic animal park closed following multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act.
John Cuneo, owner of Hawthorn Corp. and of Tyke, the African elephant who killed her trainer, escaped from Blaisdell Center and was shot 86 times before she died on Aug. 4, 1994, was recently cited with 47 violations of the Animal Welfare Act. USDA citations included conviction in October, of a Hawthorn elephant handler for beating an elephant bloody, repeatedly refusing to provide minimal veterinary care for his animals and using ax handles, cattle prods and food and water deprivation as training methods.
His entire elephant herd has been quarantined because of tuberculosis, a disease that is transmissible between humans and elephants and humans and chimpanzees.
It is past time for traveling animal acts to end. If people stop attending these shows, promoters will stop booking them.
The Honolulu Zoo chimpanzee exhibit is an excellent way to see social groups of chimps living, playing, fighting, climbing trees and being who they are, not dressed up as parodies of their human cousins.
Cathy Goeggel is the director of research and investigations for Animal Rights Hawaii.