Greyhound Racing | Cock Fighting | Rodeos | Bull Fighting

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Click here to view photo gallery (CAUTION: GRAPHIC) The modern "sport" of rodeo has strayed far from its origins in another exploitive part of American heritage, the cattle drive, when cows were rounded up and led long distances as a herd to their eventual slaughter. At least cowboys living and working on the range developed practical skills like roping and wrestling cattle in order to manage the herd, which would provide food for settlers who, in those days, would not even know what a vegetarian was. Today's "cowboys" are far removed from any purpose but deliberately hurting animals for prize money and to prove that they are "tough" enough to "break" supposedly wild animals.  However, the majority of the animals used in rodeos—broncos, bulls, steers and calves—are completely domesticated and not naturally aggressive. Their wild behavior in rodeo events is artificially induced by painful or irritating provocation like tail twisting or shocks from electric prods. For example, rodeo proponents claim that broncos naturally buck, but this is patently false. The reality is that horses won't buck unless handlers tighten a leather "flank strap" just below the rib cage. The strap is pulled so tightly that horses used in rodeos frequently exhibit open sores on their flanks caused by agitation from the strap. While the flank strap itself causes pain, the wild bucking that it induces can cause severe injuries and even fatalities.  In the calf-roping and steer-wrestling events, cowboys demonstrate their ability to capture and tie up calves and steers in the shortest amount of time. Handlers prod the calf and twist his tail prior to releasing him from the pen. After bursting out of the gate to escape his tormentors, the frightened animal runs at speeds approaching 30 miles per hour. The contestant rides alongside on horseback and lassos the calf by the neck, snapping his head back as the calf comes to an abrupt stop, flips in the air and falls to the ground. After jumping from his horse and slamming the three- to four-month old calf to the ground again to knock the wind out of his lungs, the cowboy shows off his skill by binding the animal’s legs with a rope. In the steer-wrestling event, a contestant chases the steer, then grabs him by the horns and forcibly twists his neck until he comes crashing to the ground. Because of the aggressive nature of rodeo events, animals commonly suffer serious injuries, such as torn ligaments, broken bones, fractured horns, internal bleeding, and even severed spinal cords or tracheas. All rodeos have ambulances and paramedics on-site to care for injured cowboys, as they should, yet despite the common injuries that befall animals in rodeos, Rhode Island is the only state in the country that mandates an on-site veterinarian at all rodeos. As a result, many animals go untreated and die from severe injuries. The vast majority of the animals injured in rodeos are not given pain-killing medication because most are slaughtered for human consumption, and drugs would make their meat unsafe to eat. Animals who are severely injured during rodeo competitions are often shipped directly to slaughterhouses. Click here to view our rodeo factsheet