In New Zealand, Rodeo becomes an entertaining family day where burly participants imitate their Texas counterparts by throwing ridiculous big hats are tying into an arena and torturing three-month-old calves to impress the audience.
It’s time to end rodeos in New Zealand. That’s what many are saying as rodeo season in the island nation starts again. Hundreds of people have gathered at local rodeos around the country to protest the sport’s cruelty and abuse towards the animals required to perform.
Join them in their protests. Add your voice by signing the petition and demanding that New Zealand ban rodeos on a national level!
For the riders and the spectators, rodeos are just a fun game. But for horses and cows, it seems like a matter of life and death. They are prey animals, so when they feel another living being on their backs, they can only imagine that their lives are in danger. Imagine that feeling – would you want another living being to feel that, day after day?
For those animals that don’t cooperate, rodeo riders use various tools to get them to buck and put on a good, entertaining show. They may prod them with an electric shocker to provoke a buck, poke them with spurs, or fit them with “flank straps” – a rope tied tightly around the animals’ abdomen.
If handlers and riders need all these horrible tools just to make an animal jump, that should tell you that it is not a great experience for the animal.
But even worse than the pain they endure, some rodeo animals never make it out alive. According to Safe, an animal protection organization, four animals died in rodeos just last year. That’s four animals that were used as tools and then discarded once their use had expired.
This “sport” is cruel and should be outlawed. It’s just that simple.
Tell New Zealand that there is no bucking reason to abuse animals.
Sign the petition and ask for the sport to be banned nationally.
My comment: Just like rap music, rodeo is a product of American “pop culture” that New Zealand has adopted with open arms. So it’s not a tradition at all, it’s an import. Bad examples are quickly adopted by people, good ones are not.
Cruelty will always have its supporters. It always has and it always will. Rodeo (this primitive demonstration of Cowboy’s potency) has worked hard to expand its support base.
They call this animal abuse a “sport”, but these brutal shows are part of the entertainment industry. It is often also a matter of gambling, such as greyhound racing, horse racing and so is rodeo too. The people involved in riding the rodeo animals are fit and healthy young people who want to signal and prove their potency.
It’s very clear that rodeo is a sadistic act of torturing animals .
Without pain, distress and fear, these animals could not be ridden.
The rodeo animals are victims of abuse and anyone who loves animals should boycott this brutal theater of indigenous cowboys.
My best regards to all, Venus
World Animals Voice 