Elephant Rides Proposed for State Fair In Sacramento

Monday, November 22, 2004


The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors last year wisely voted to ban
elephant rides from the annual Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival, for
reasons of animal welfare and public safety.

Such progressive and compassionate views have yet to reach Sacramento,
apparently. California State Fair officials are currently negotiating
to have elephant rides at the 2005 State Fair. It's a bad idea for all
concerned, and Fair officials and state legislators need to hear from
us. Virginia Handley (The Fund for Animals), Curt Ransom (Humane
Society of the U.S.), and I have met with the Fair administration, and
have been unable to persuade them thus far to drop this ill-advised
idea. We need your help to convince them otherwise.

One can only imagine the death and destruction should a five-ton
elephant run amok through a crowd of 50,000 people with terrified
children aboard. It wouldn't take much to set the disaster in motion:
a car backfiring, a firecracker, a minor earthquake, etc......Remember
Tyke, who was gunned down on the city streets of Honolulu a few years ago?

When not giving rides, these Asian elephants (an endangered species) are
kept in chains. The travel from Southern California is highly stressful
on the animals, and potentially dangerous. Elephant rides serve only to
reinforce the idea that animals are here merely for our entertainment,
and the animals' welfare is secondary. There's also a public health
risk: elephants can carry and transmit tuberculosis to humans.

Surely we can come up with a more humane and life-affirming
entertainment. Encourage the Fair management to adopt a written policy
banning ALL exotic and/or wild animal acts and exhibits.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Please contact: Norbert Bartosik, General Manager & CEO
Mike Bradley, Chief, Bureau of Exhibits
CALIFORNIA STATE FAIR
1600 Exposition Blvd.
Sacramento, CA 95815
tel. 916/263-3000
fax 916/263-7903
e-mail - genmgr [at] calexpo.com

Letters to state legislators would be helpful, too. All may be written
c/o The State Capitol, Sacramento, CA 95814. (NOTE: Senator Deborah
Ortiz and Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, both of Sacramento, are
ex-officio members of the Fair Board of Directors.)

Letters to the Editors of local newspapers would also be helpful.

Please send (blind) copies of any letters you write to ACTION FOR ANIMALS.

And please forward this alert to anyone you know who might help.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Eric Mills, coordinator
ACTION FOR ANIMALS
P.O. Box 20184
Oakland, Ca 94620
tel. 510/652-5603
EricM [afa [at] mcn.org]