Ringling Shuts Down - But Parent Company FELD ENTERTAINMENT Continues to Abuse Elephants
Help STOP FELD ENTERTAINMENT'S ELEPHANT ABUSE
We must convince the Feld family to send all their elephants to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee and the Performing Animal Welfare Society in California. The Feld family can immediately end this misery. The decades-long pubic education resulted in people understanding that Ringling Abuses Animals. Now we must get these poor elephants to bonafide sanctuaries where they can live more natural lives.
After abusing animals for 146 years, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus shut down in May 2017.
Feld Entertainment, owned and controlled by Ken Feld and his daughters, has owned Ringling Brothers since 1982 until it closed. The Feld family continues to own the majority of the Ringling elephants.
Feld Entertainment is the parent company of Disney on Ice, Doodlebops Live, Disney Live, Monster Jam, International Hot Rod Association, and AMA Supercross Championship.
However, Ringling continues to abuse the poor elephants at its torture chamber in Florida where they are beaten with bullhooks and chained for at least 15 hours a day. Other elephants have been given to zoos in a number of states where they are deprived of freely roaming on hundreds of acres and having the opportunity to live with many elephants to given them social choices.
Please help by calling, emailing and mailing messages to Ken, Alana, Nicole and Juliette Feld:
800 Feld Way
Palmetto, FL 34221
P: (941) 721-1200
information@feldinc.com
Please CLICK TO SIGN Petition Urging Feld Family to Send Elephants to Sanctuary
For more than 30 years, the founders of Humanity Through Education protested and documented the abuse of animals exploited by Ringling Bros. Circus. Hundreds of local activists joined us as we educated the public about the animal abuse at each Ringling show in the greater Bay Area for all those years. And it paid off!
Due to the public education about the animal abuse the 147-year-old Ringling Bros. Circus shutdown in May 2017.
However, while the Feld family, which owns Ringling, is no longer using elephants for circus performances the Feld family continues to abuse these poor elephants at their torture chamber in Florida (photos below) where they are beaten with bullhooks and whips and chained at least 15 hours a day. Ringling has also distributed some of its elephants to various zoos which house elephants in small, inadequate enclosures.
Photos and video below are all from the Feld Family elephant facility in Polk County, Florida.
Just because the elephants are out of sight we cannot forget them! We must keep them in our minds and the minds of Feld patrons if they are ever going to be free of Feld’s abuse and be able to live as peacefully and freely as possible in captivity.
Feld Employee Reveals Abusive Training of Baby Elephants
Sam Haddock was an elephant handler who worked at Feld's Ringling Center for Elephant Conservation (breeding and training center) in Polk City, Florida, off and on between 1997 and 2005. Mr. Haddock was himself heavily involved in training baby elephants at Ringling and came to regret his career choice later in life. He provided PETA with these behind-the-scene photos to share with the public and help elephants. The Ringling elephants continue to live at this Feld family-owned facility in Florida. The elephants continue to be trained in the manner and chained most of the 24-hour day.
His circus career began with Ringling in the 1970s as an elephant trainer. In 1978, he left the circus and was diagnosed with active tuberculosis (TB) a few weeks later. He believed that he had contracted this deadly disease from the elephants, who were being treated for TB. Some 30 years later, elephants at Ringling are still becoming infected with and dying from TB.
When Mr. Haddock first contacted PETA, he described the violence and unimaginable cruelty inflicted on baby elephants and said that he had the shocking photos to prove it.
Mr. Haddock's late wife had urged him to do the right thing and expose Ringling's torturous treatment of elephants at its so-called "conservation center." A short time after providing PETA with dozens of disturbing images (see here) and a statement detailing how baby elephants are bound with ropes to break their spirits, Mr. Haddock himself passed away following a sudden illness. Read Sam's complete statement here.
Sam Haddock, 1956-2009