June 16 (AGR)— The Ringling Brothers Circus – the “Greatest Show on Earth” – reduced local performances here from three rings to one in 1998 with the construction of the Bi-Lo Center, a more attractive venue, in Greenville, SC. The Circus now refers to its Asheville show as a “Hometown Edition” and performed it June 9-13 at the Asheville Civic Center.

Cozy small-town guise notwithstanding, Carolina Animal Action (CAA) was there to demonstrate against it just as they have in the past, assembling a crowd on June 9 and 12 to expose its dark side.

“We were there to educate people about the horrors of how animals are treated,” said CAA member Stewart David. “They spend their lives traveling in boxcars and trucks, they’re beaten, they’re forced to perform stupid tricks; the elephants are always in chains…

“Ringling Brothers claims that they take good care of their animals. But we’ve heard that the Detroit Zoo is going to send their elephants to a sanctuary because they can’t take care of them properly.”

About 30 people showed up at the June 12 protest, including 15 kids from five to 15 years old chanting “Animals sad, circuses bad;” demonstrators handed out 500 leaflets to curious attendees. Circus security was present with radios and cameras, taking pictures.

Some circus-goers were hostile, but there were also those who’d never thought about the animal abuse issue before; David says that every year a few people say they will never attend a circus which uses animals again. Some of the protesters went to a nearby bridge overlooking Highway 240 and held a sign over traffic speeding past below which read “Ringling Brothers: The Cruelest Show on Earth.” David says the response from drivers was by and large positive.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has compiled a dossier of the Circus’s animal abuse.

“Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus,” says the group, “has failed to meet minimal federal standards for the care of animals used in exhibition as established in the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).” The report recounts numerous annual citations from the USDA for animal deaths, mistreatment, and torture, and says that “Of the 60 elephants touring with Ringling… 44 were captured in the wild. At least 18 elephants have died since 1992.”

On June 13, 2000, Tom Rider, a former employee, testified before Congress that “[Elephants] are beaten all the time when they don’t perform properly...When I became disturbed about the continual beatings, I was told, ‘That’s discipline.’”

Training commonly includes beatings, the withholding of food and water, the burning of front paws to coerce animals onto their hind legs, and the choking of big cats are choked with neck ropes. Elephants are bound from tusks to feet in martingales. Trainers keep them “constantly in pain or in fear of pain,” says Tufts University veterinarian Paul Waldau, echoing Henry Ringling North himself (“They work from fear”).

Critics of Ringling Brothers, owned by Feld Entertainment, the largest live-entertainment company in the world, refer also to its powerful misinformation campaign. The company’s efforts to preserve its image as a purveyor of wholesome family entertainment have sometimes assumed Stalinesque proportions: Feld, according to a 2001 Salon article, initiated an 8-year surveillance and dirty tricks campaign, even hiring former CIA agents, against Janice Pottker, who’d published an article critical of the circus and was planning a book.

“We’re not opposed to entertainment,” says David. “There are a lot of great circuses without animals, like Cirque du Soleil... We want to encourage people to go see those shows.”