CMU Bars Jordan World Circus After PETA Appeal
School Nabs Elephant-Shaped Vegan Chocolates in Thanks for Cutting Ties With Notorious Wild-Animal Circus
For Immediate Release:
November 19, 2019
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
After PETA pointed out that Jordan World Circus has a long history of working with abusive animal exhibitors—and following a protest organized by a PETA campus representative—Central Michigan University (CMU) confirmed that Jordan World’s performance there earlier this month would be its last. In thanks, PETA sent the university a box of delicious elephant-shaped vegan chocolates.
“Central Michigan University did the right thing by stopping Jordan World Circus from dragging abused wild animals onto its campus,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Every venue that joins the school’s move to stop cruelty helps PETA push circuses toward an animal-free future.”
Jordan World currently leases its elephant act from the notorious Carden International Circus, Inc., whose operators have been cited multiple times by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including for failing to provide tigers with adequate nutrition and space and failing to provide an elephant who had open wounds with proper veterinary care. Video footage taken in 2017 shows an elephant, Patty, at a Jordan World performance confined to a barren, electrified, concrete pen backstage and swaying continuously, an abnormal behavior indicative of distress. The other elephant in the video, Carol, is often forced to perform and give rides despite being stiff, sore, and lame. Both elephants are still being forced to tour with Jordan World.
In addition, Jordan World’s big-cat exhibitor, Adam Burck, has a policy that the animals must be caged “at all times” while on the road, except during shows—which implies that they aren’t given adequate exercise for the 10 months of the year that they’re forced to travel and perform.
CMU joins dozens of communities and more than 650 venues nationwide that now prohibit or restrict animal performances.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
