For Immediate Release: 14 March 2007
Friends of Animals
Vigil To Be Held 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm, Saturday, 17 March, Harbor Yard Arena, 600 Main St., Bridgeport, Connecticut
Darien, Conn., U.S. — When ticket holders arrive at Bridgeport’s Harbor Yard Arena on Friday and Saturday, March 16-17, 2007, they’ll be met by activists from Friends of Animals and the Connecticut Animal Rights Coalition, protesting an Enterprise Rent-A-Car sponsored rodeo event known as bull riding.
Bull riding is usually, albeit not necessary, performed by male apes of the species known as Homo sapiens. It can and does involve electro-shock devices, spurs, and flank straps; all would be called instruments of sadistic torture if used on the human ape.
Priscilla Feral, president of Connecticut-based Friends of Animals, says the keyed-up hominids claim their bulls can be worth $10,000 or more — as proof that such property would be well-treated.
Feral objects, “No one who respects other conscious animals would twist their tails in a chute, shock them with 5,000 volts as they exit, or tighten straps around their flanks to provoke them to violently buck their riders, as a bunch of people look on, hooting and hollering.”
“Professional Bull Riders, Inc. boasts that bull riding is a ‘dangerous, exciting, demanding’ event ‘requiring intense physical prowess.’ Based on such cowboy boasts, $10 million was awarded in prize money in 2006,” Feral adds.
Peace-seeking apes from Friends of Animals and the Connecticut Animal Rights Coalition note the value of deciding to stop supporting the practices that glorify such “prowess” — more frankly called the domination of captive animals. They explain that bulls and other animals no longer performing in rodeo arenas will be slaughtered.
“There are plenty of ways to have a day out without making a spectacle of other animals,” Feral says. “And every day, we can also advance animal interests through vegan living.”
Friends of Animals, headquartered in Darien, Connecticut, has been a global leader in animal rights advocacy since 1957.