PETA Protesters to Ringling PR Reps: You Can’t Spin Cruelty

Group Will Draw Attention to Circus’s Violent Treatment of Animals

For Immediate Release:
December 4, 2013

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Holding signs that read, “You Can’t Spin Cruelty,” PETA and Georgia Animal Rights and Protection (GARP) members will gather on Thursday outside the Buckhead location of Maggiano’s in Atlanta, where the Georgia Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America will host a luncheon featuring PR reps for Feld Entertainment, Inc., the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. PETA and GARP’s point? That no amount of PR can gloss over Ringling’s atrocious history of beating or otherwise mistreating elephants, tigers, and other animals.

When:   Thursday, December 5, 11:15 a.m.

Where:  Outside Maggiano’s, 3368 Peachtree Rd. N.E. (near the intersection with Stratford Road N.E.), Atlanta

“Ringling Bros. is a public relations nightmare,” says PETA Foundation Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Delcianna Winders. “There’s not a PR team in the world that’s slick enough to sell the beating of baby elephants, the whipping of tigers, and the use of chains, bullhooks, and electric prods on animals—all for the sake of a few cheap tricks.”

PETA has obtained compelling photos taken inside Ringling’s breeding and training compound that expose how baby elephants used by Ringling are stretched out, slammed to the ground, gouged with steel-tipped bullhooks, and shocked with electric prods. Eyewitness testimony and numerous inspection reports reveal that Ringling routinely fails to let the tigers out of their tiny transport cages except when they’re forced to perform. In 2011, Ringling Bros. paid the largest fine in circus history—$270,000—for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

For more information, please visit PETA’s website RinglingBeatsAnimals.com.