VFW Post Bars Animal Circuses After PETA Appeal

Organization Nabs Delicious Vegan Brownies in Thanks for Compassionate Move

For Immediate Release:
October 14, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After learning that Culpepper & Merriweather Circus would be performing at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post on October 12, PETA worked with the organization to get all animal circuses barred from performing there in the future. In thanks, PETA sent the post a box of vegan brownies.

“This VFW post has done the right thing in closing its doors to circuses that haul sensitive animals from town to town and force them to perform under threat of punishment,” says PETA Foundation Deputy Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Rachel Mathews. “Every city, county, and venue that rejects animal acts helps PETA push circuses toward an animal-free future.”

Culpepper & Merriweather Circus has been cited repeatedly for violating the federal Animal Welfare Act, including by failing to provide animals with adequate veterinary care and improperly handling them. In one incident, a tiger cub was held inside a plastic crate in a tractor-trailer without air conditioning in nearly 90-degree heat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that the cub was underweight, and after the animal was confiscated, a veterinarian determined that he was suffering from skin abrasions. Following that incident, the USDA suspended the circus’s license, finding that it demonstrated a “shockingly cavalier attitude regarding the health and safety of [the] animals.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist viewpoint that animals are ours to breed, sell, or display for profit or amusement. The VFW post in Wimberley joins more than 650 venues nationwide that now prohibit wild-animal exhibits.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.