Victory! DSM Drops Hadi Shrine Circus Sponsorship After Push From PETA
For Immediate Release:
February 8, 2023
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Locally based global health and nutrition company DSM—a top sponsor of the 2022 Hadi Shrine Circus in Indiana—has confirmed to PETA that it has cut ties with the circus, known for hiring exhibitors who keep elephants in shackles and abuse them with bullhooks (weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end) and dominate other wild animals with whips.
“Animals used for the Hadi Shrine Circus are forced to perform confusing and even painful tricks under the threat of violence, over and over again,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is celebrating DSM’s kind decision to stop sponsoring this cruel show, which must get with the times and end its animal acts.”
In 2022, the Hadi Shrine Circus used elephants from Carson & Barnes—whose head trainer was caught on video viciously attacking an elephant with a bullhook until she screamed in pain—as well as camels, dogs, and ponies. PETA is calling on it and every other holdout Shrine circus—to follow the lead of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus by using only willing human participants. Shrine circuses in Canada haven’t used wild animals in years, the Moolah Shrine recently dropped elephants from its shows, and the Western Montana Shrine Circus ended wild-animal 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.
