Bull Riding Fans Confront Animal Rights Protesters at Madison Square Garden
The News
“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.”
Bull riders use weapons including electric prods, spurs and flank straps to provoke bulls into bucking
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.
@theirturn Watch bull riding fans clash with #animalrights activists protesting the Professional Bull Riding (PBR) show at Madison Square Garden. A few of PBR’s corporate sponsors are tagged. #animalcruelty #bullrider
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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Nora Marino is reckless liar.
Every bull ride takes two athletes – a courageous cowboy and world-class bovine. The prized animal athletes competing in professional bull riding are cared for as true stars of the sport.
Don’t listen to her lies. Here are important facts about the world-class treatment of the bulls in PBR:
The bulls buck because of genetic breeding. Just as thoroughbred racehorses are carefully bred to run fast, PBR bucking bulls are genetically disposed to jump, kick and spin with power and grace. They are NEVER shocked, coerced, or harmfully prodded to compete. The only training device used to stimulate bucking behavior is a flank strap tied relatively loosely around the haunches of the bull.
The flank strap does not hurt the bull. This soft cotton rope is used to encourage a genetically pre-disposed bucking bull to kick. Imagine a kitten with a ribbon loosely tied around its paw, trying to shoo it away. The flank strap never touches the bulls’ genitals.
Bucking bulls have a carefully regulated diet, heath regimen, travel, and performance schedule. PBR has rigorous guidelines for transporting the bulls, required travel rest periods, and other policies to ensure the welfare of the animal athletes. Bulls compete at most two times in any given weekend, many only once. Beyond that, stock contractors treat their prized animal athletes like members of their own family, including giving them the very best food and health care. Stock contractors determine their bulls’ schedules in the best interests of their valuable animal athletes whose health and well-being impact their livelihood.
These bulls enjoy what they are doing. Each stock contractor has stories about bulls eager to rush into the trailer to go to PBR events. They have a job to do, which they love. They buck with the same prideful zeal as a dog returning to its owner a thrown ball. Just as it is evident when a pet is happy, the bulls exhibit the same energetic, tail-wagging behavior on game day.
PBR bulls live a long and healthy life. Outside the PBR, bulls enter the food supply at the average age of three. PBR bulls enjoy a substantially better fate. Following the first-class life of a professional athlete, getting the very best food, training and medical care, these bulls retire to stud at a relatively young age. They live the remainder of their pampered life breeding on a ranch, where they die peacefully of natural causes. In the bovine world, becoming a PBR bucking bull is like winning the animal lottery.
PBR is a sport that celebrates its animal athletes, who live a great, long life, always putting its animal athletes first.
– Andrew Giangola, author LOVE & TRY: Stories of Gratitude and Grit from Professional Bull Riding
Broken spines, cinched testicles, terrified bulls forced into vans and transported to a violent, humiliating event. Yeah, that’s manly. It’s sickening, cowardly and utterly cruel. Thank you all protestors for being there.
It’s cruel and shameful and with a major structural upgrade at MSG, this is going backwards. Attendance is falling and this is dying “sport”.
MSG management is well aware of the animal cruelty associated with bull riding is prioritizing politics ahead of its own corporate values.
“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the devil in human form.” — William Ralph Inge
Bull riding is evil . Lock up the evil people.
How cruel these people are to animals. Lock up the evil people.