An Entertainment Abuses Article from All-Creatures.org

Bull Riding Fans Confront Animal Rights Protesters at Madison Square Garden

From Donny Moss, TheirTurn.net
January 2024

Bulls don’t naturally buck. The bull riders use cruel methods to provoke them that may include shocking them with electric prods, jabbing them with spurs, squeezing them with flank straps and twisting their tails. Everything about this so-called sport is inhumane. 

Bull riders use weapons including electric prods, spurs and flank straps to provoke bulls into bucking

“Fuck the bulls. Fuck the bulls.”
As animal rights activists protested a Professional Bull Riding (PBR) event at NYC’s Madison Square Garden (MSG), fans heading inside greeted them with obscenities, remarks about eating meat and nervous smiles. The reactions came as no surprise to the activists, who have protested year-after-year in an effort to educate the public about the cruelty associated with bull riding.

“Bulls don’t naturally buck,” said Nora Constance Marino, an attorney who organizes the annual PBR protest at Madison Square Garden. “The bull riders use cruel methods to provoke them that may include shocking them with electric prods, jabbing them with spurs, squeezing them with flank straps and twisting their tails. Everything about this so-called sport is inhumane.”

While most of the PBR patrons ignored the protesters, several stopped to say that they had misgivings about attending. Some agreed that bull riding is inhumane, and others said they came only because they received free tickets.

A few patrons defended the “sport,” stating that the “bulls are treated better than people.” After speaking to Edita Birnkrant, a protester who said that some of the bulls are injured and killed, one devoted PBR fan acknowledged that she could be correct. “It’s possible,” he said.

PBR transports bulls around the country in trailers and stores them in holding pens at bull riding arenas

For years, activists in NYC have called on the management at MSG to stop hosting the PBR. In 2019 and early 2020, before the pandemic, the Animal Cruelty Exposure Fund (ACEF), Marino’s organization, staged protests at the Upper East Side home of then MSG Sports President Andrew Lustgarten. His neighbors told the activists that they suspect the protests led him to move out of the building.

Animal rights activists in NYC protest bull riding at Madison Square Garden

According to PETA, animals used in rodeo events, including bull riding, “commonly sustain broken bones, punctured lungs, snapped necks, or torn muscles, and they sometimes die in an arena.”

Cruelty to animals violates the corporate social responsibility policies espoused by many of the PBR’s sponsors, but that doesn’t stop them from underwriting the bull riding tour.

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