Suffering of animals in circuses must be stopped, not simply displaced

A news report yesterday confirmed that a group of lions and tigers, likely to be those that have been used for a number of years in Tom Duffy’s Circus in Ireland, are destined to join a new circus in England. This comes just six months after campaigners celebrated the apparent end of use of big cats in English circuses as the last performing lions and tigers to be used by the UK-based Great British Circus were sent to Ireland to join Courtney Brothers Circus. It was heralded as the end of an era when Duffy’s announced that the big cats would be leaving the show but there is little to celebrate now we know that the animals will simply be moved across the Irish Sea to continue in the same existence.

Tiger in in Tom Duffy's circus in 2012. (c) CAPS/C.Redmond

Any victory is somewhat hollow if suffering is simply displaced from one country to another. In the long term, the more individual countries that ban the use of animals in circuses, the less demand there will be for those animals and the fewer will be bred in future to endure impoverished and unnatural lives in the big top. It goes without saying that we must continue to strive for national bans as part of the long-term campaign. In the meantime, though, we will continue to see animals being shifted from pillar to post and a tiger in a circus in England will suffer equally to a tiger in a circus in Ireland while the respective Governments continue to stall. This is why it is so important that the UK and Ireland close the door on this practice once and for all. 

Concern is not limited to wild animals (c) CAPS/C.Redmond

It is also vital that we don’t forget the other animals. As Duffy’s announced that they would no longer use big cats in their shows, they promptly replaced them with dogs and birds. This means more animals will be spending their lives performing meaningless tricks for circus audiences. Whilst none of the legislative measures in discussion in the UK and Ireland are currently considering banning the use of domesticated animals in circus shows, we firmly support an end to the use of all animals in circuses.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though – far from it. Irish Ministers from Dublin and Belfast have recently appointed a team to consider the situation of wild animals in circuses. England has committed to ban (although we continue to urge the Government to ignore the ill-advised recommendations of the select committee on this matter). Scotland is due to consult on the issue in the coming year and Wales has shown commitment to ban. 

Local grassroots action has been vital in driving down visitor numbers to animal circuses and shows have dropped animal acts in response to protests and negative feedback from customers. This has to continue for the horses, dogs and other domesticated animals which will not be protected by banning legislation.We are moving in the right direction and we will succeed. It will just take more hard work.

If you live in England, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland, you can help.

If you live in ENGLAND, please write to Lord de Mauley today on demauley@parliament.uk and demand that the ban on all wild animals in circuses is implemented as soon as possible.

If you live in the REPUBLIC of IRELAND, please contact Minister, Simon Coveney, on simon.coveney@oir.ie to request an outright ban on the use of wild animals in circuses.

If you live in NORTHERN IRELAND, please contact Minister, Michelle O’Neill, on dardhelpline@dardni.gov.uk with the same request.

Government must stick to its promise: It’s time to put an end to the circus policy circus

Since 2005, the current political process towards securing a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses has been pursued tirelessly by animal protection organisations, individual campaigners and activists and a host of sympathetic cross-party MPs.

In April of this year, after a number of false starts (remember the news that the Defra Minister was “minded” to ban back in early 2011?), a number of false claims (remember the non-existent court case in Austria?) and a number of high-profile opponents (remember the allegations of coercion against PM David Cameron's office by Mark Pritchard MP?), the draft bill to ban the use of wild animals in English circuses was finally published.  The ban would not be implemented until 2015, mind, but the long-fought battle appeared to have been won and widespread celebrations ensued.

Why do zebras deserve less protection than tigers? Photo: CAPS

But then, on Tuesday of this week, the report released by the EFRA select committee charged with scrutinising the draft bill put forward by Government made the recommendation that the ban should only be applied to elephants and big cats. This recommendation was based on the committee’s belief that the public have no real concern for racoons, snakes, zebra and camels. It was furthermore suggested that the only reason that there was concern for elephants, tigers and lions was that the public mistakenly believes that these animals are still used in large numbers in English circuses.

It seems that the committee were unaware of (or perhaps choosing to ignore) the 2009/2010 public consultation on the subject of wild animals in circuses which asked the question of the general public “Do you think that there are any species of wild animal which it is acceptable to use in travelling circuses?” and which saw a resounding 95.5% of respondents answering “No”.

Camels are no more suited to circus life than elephants. Photo: CAPS

The committee may be confused on this matter but the public are certainly not. Indeed, the public have spoken out clearly, along with experts, animal protection campaigners and MPs time and time again.

If Government does choose to follow the committee’s advice then, by banning animals that have already been removed from the circus, and failing to prohibit those animals that are still being used, the ban would save zero animals from continued exploitation. That certainly is not what we have all been working so hard towards for so long.

Thankfully the Government is not bound by the select committee’s advice and can choose to continue to pursue the ban that we all want to see implemented. But we must remind officials that we were listening when Lord de Mauley made the promise that:

“This legislation will end the use of wild animals in travelling circuses in this country. It will also help ensure that our international reputation as a leading protector of animals continues into a new global era”.

Not only were we listening, but we will continue to hold them to that promise.

Please join us in taking urgent action today by writing to the Defra minister, Lord de Mauley, to ask him to reject any suggestion of narrowing the scope of the ban and deliver on his promise to prohibit the use of all wild animals in travelling circuses in England.

Please don’t delay – this quick and easy action will help to demonstrate that the public want a ban on the exploitation of all wild animals in travelling circuses.

Email Lord de Mauley: demauley@parliament.uk

Thank you

Find out more about the progress of this campaign by visiting www.captiveanimals.org

There can be no justice without truth: How can the zoo industry be accountable when it refuses to be truthful?

I spent the last few days at a conference organised by the Born Free Foundation and Vier Pfoten/Four Paws in Brussels. The discussion was focused around captive wild animals and whether or not they are protected effectively by the law in the various European Member States. It was interesting, at times challenging, but ultimately really valuable. The conference had an ambitious agenda; the organisers effectively managed to facilitate useful and meaningful discussion between the captive animal industry (there were zoo representatives there), the animal protection lobby (yours truly and a whole host of other NGO reps) and Government officials from the various states. I would be lying if I said there wasn’t some heated discussion but, on the whole, for groups of people who may often find themselves on different sides of the fence, it was great to see such a willingness to engage.

Newly released guidelines from ABTA

I had been interested, and delighted, to hear as part of one of the presentations that ABTA, the UK travel association, had released new guidance to members on responsible tourism and animal welfare.  Whilst I am not 100% in agreement with absolutely all of the standards, the use of animals in tourism is something which has long  been overlooked and so I was really pleased to see this being addressed at industry level. I hope that this scheme will complement the Right Tourism project established last year by Care for the Wild. It seems between the two then both industry (the ABTA standards) and tourists themselves (the Right Tourism project) are now being educated on this important matter. I sincerely hope that it will have an impact on the huge numbers of animals that are exploited as a matter of course in the global tourism industry.

I was particularly interested to see that ABTA had outlined certain practices involving animals in tourism which were deemed to be simply “unacceptable”, as well as offering more general advice and outlining best practice.  Whilst not legally binding, it was made clear that those operators signing up to the guidance would be expected to take their provisions seriously. Having just been released in the last few days, it is unclear at this point specifically how relationships between tour operators and tourists attractions will be dealt with but it seems that those businesses which persist in carrying out "unacceptable" behaviours (bullfighting, for example), will not be supported by ABTA operators in the long run.

The one “unacceptable” practice which stood out for me from the list presented was “mutilation” for non-medical purposes. It was used throughout the discussion as an obvious example of something that the tourism industry should not accept. Nobody in the room disagreed as they presumably pictured tigers in a far flung place being de-clawed or monkeys having their canine teeth pulled out so they don’t pose a danger to punters when they are used as photo props in sunny climes. Two seats away from the ABTA rep was a spokesperson from Chester Zoo in the UK. She was also there to form part of the same panel discussion. 

So I had to ask: How does ABTA intend to deal with the leading zoos in the UK and the rest of Europe (which are presumably promoted by ABTA members to potential tourists) that carry out mutilation on animals in their thousands as a matter of course via the procedure of pinioning (partial amputation of a bird’s wing to render her permanently flightless). And did the representative from Chester Zoo have anything to add, given that her zoo carries the procedure?

It stands to reason that, following the release of the new guidance, ABTA members should not support these zoos whilst the practice persists. And, in my view, they should be applauded for doing so.

I expected the question to cause some discomfort but was surprised when the Chester Zoo rep informed me, and the 100-odd other delegates, that the procedure was perfectly legal and that Chester Zoo did not pinion birds in any case. I say I was surprised because this claim was untrue – just two months ago, Chester Zoo admitted that it pinioned birds in a statement to the national press which confirmed: “Where possible we keep our birds fully winged in large enclosures. To maintain exotic bird species in captivity then, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, we must prevent them from escaping, as it is an offence to release exotic species into the wild. We thus limit pinioning to two bird groups, flamingos and cranes, as these birds are kept in large open enclosures”.

According to the Chester Zoo website, this means that over 200 birds have had part of their wing surgically removed in this way at this zoo alone.

The zoo rep's response essentially diluted the question and she was supported by another speaker who was closely linked to the zoo industry. The suggestion was that there was nothing to worry about and that, in any case, few zoos do it and it's well on its way out. The ABTA spokesperson followed the lead of the zoo reps, the question went unanswered and the discussion moved on.

On speaking to a colleague afterwards, he suggested that it was to be expected that the zoo rep would bend the truth in order to progress her own agenda. I disagree. If you are in a media interview and you have been pitched against an opponent, then I accept that the zoo industry will bring its PR machine into play. It’s part of the game of publicity – it’s what makes the news story interesting. However as a speaker on a panel where there is a stated common goal of identifying problems and working together to seek common solutions, I believe that the PR spin should be left at the door.

At CAPS, we have been calling for an independent review of the practice of pinioning to be carried out by Defra following the launch of our Fight for Flight campaign. This incident simply serves to highlight the vital need for the UK zoo industry to be held to account on this issue.

A wiser person than me said “there can be no justice without truth” and this rang true in this instance. If the zoo industry will not be honest about its practices, then there can be no debate. If there can be no debate, then the industry is not accountable; either to its own visitors or to the animals themselves.

If you want to find out more about the Fight for Flight and help to put an end to the cruel practice of pinioning, please have a look at the main campaign page and get involved.

If you're heading off on holiday, make sure you have a look at the Right Tourism website before you do.That way you can make sure that your few days of fun in the sunshine is animal friendly.

Double standards, bad mathematics and a law that can’t be enforced – the ongoing debacle of circus licensing plans

The plans to license the use of wild animals in circuses while the long-overdue ban is worked upon by Government have been labelled a waste of time, a waste of money, unethical, unenforceable and, most importantly, incapable of preventing animal suffering in circuses.

Two days ago, the Government released the guidance which will accompany the licensing regulations if they become law. This, we were told in a recent meeting, would give context to the regulations and make it clear what circuses must do to comply with the welfare standards required and retain their licence. Whilst we maintain that animals’ welfare simply cannot be met in circuses, and that their continued exploitation is ethically unacceptable, we were interested to see what provisions the Government had suggested;
particularly given the strong promises made over the last twelve months of a “robust” and “tough” system of licensing which would “ensure high welfare standards”.

The first thing we noticed about the guidance was the clear double standard for elephants. In circuses, requirements for elephants were markedly lower than the standards devised just months before (and by the same Government department) for elephants held in zoos. In zoos, elephants require an outdoor space of between 2,000 and 3,000 square metres as a minimum. In circuses, the elephants are afforded just 500 square metres. Elephants in zoos must not be chained for periods in excess of three out of 24 hours. Elephants in circuses can be chained overnight every day of their lives. Elephants in zoos cannot normally be contained by electric fences alone, yet for elephants in circuses, this is acceptable as a primary means of containment. The contradictions are numerous and the double standard is abundantly clear. It is recognised the world over that elephants are inherently unsuited to life in captivity, full stop. Clearly, neither set of standards is based on the animals’ true needs, but on the limitations of the industry that happens to be using them. The result can only ever be that welfare is seriously compromised.

Another part of the circus guidance makes the demand that animals’ night quarters give them nothing more than space to stand up, turn round and lie down comfortably. Animals must be allowed exercise for a minimum of six hours in a 24 hour period. The other 18 hours can, presumably, be spent confined. Two hours of the animals’ precious exercise time can, according to the guidance, be used for “training and performance”.

Two big cats can be given an outdoor area measuring just 5 metres by 10 and the indoor living space for a tiger or a lion needs to be no bigger than 4 metres wide by 4 metres long. We shouldn’t forget that tigers can have a natural home range between 60 – 100 square kilometres.

The above are just some examples of how these standards, designed to protect animal welfare, clearly do nothing of the sort.

Having made comment on space, it should be mentioned that basic mathematical principles are confused in the guidance leading to incorrect definitions given to space calculations for animal enclosures. According to the guidance, 10 square metres is: “an area 10 metres long and 10 metres wide”. But this is not ten square metres, it is 100 square metres. If Government have applied this incorrect calculation to the entire guidance, then the difference in space provision for the animals is significant. We are awaiting clarification from Defra on this error.

Finally, CAPS and campaign partners presented evidence to Government in the last few weeks that the proposed regulations contain a serious legal error which makes them impossible to enforce. We have argued that this, if nothing else, warrants their withdrawal. Defra lawyers have been unable to explain how to overcome the issue identified but concluded that this would be something for inspectors to deal with when the time for enforcement comes. It seems that the buck has simply been passed. We do not intend to let the matter lie and have warned Government that we believe the regulations may be open to legal challenge on this basis if they proceed.

The evidence is more compelling than ever. Licensing won’t protect animals. Licensing creates double standards. Licensing legitimises a practice which is ethically unacceptable. Licensing is unenforceable. Licensing will not prevent suffering in the big top. Only a ban will do.

One year since Parliamentary debate on animal circuses and still no ban

For those of you that have followed the work of  CAPS for some time, you may know that the 23^rd June 2011 was an important day for the long-term campaign to see an end to the use of wild animals in circuses. It was on that day that a debate in Parliament led to a unanimous motion being passed to call on Government to implement a ban in England. For animal protection advocates, it was important not just for the outcome, but also for the simple fact that the campaign had reached such heights politically and that leading politicians were taking to the floor to speak out so strongly on the issue. There was widespread celebration following the debate as the “light at the end of the tunnel” suddenly seemed within our reach.

But one year on and the Government is still delaying.

March 2012 saw Government officials promise to ban and that promise was reiterated in April when CAPS, along with representatives from other leading organisations, met with the minister responsible for the issue to discuss a way forward (see HERE for more info). In the same meeting we committed to supporting Government in the introduction of a ban, but warned that we would also be holding officials accountable for the promises made and expect changes to be introduced as soon as possible.

True to our promise, in the weeks running up to the anniversary of the debate, we have been working closely with Parliamentarians and seen renewed cross-party commitment to the ban, as well as a number of MPs keen to move the campaign back into the spotlight. In addition, members of the animal protection lobby have stepped up campaigns to ensure that the message is coming through loud and clear: we will not allow this issue to be brushed aside.

We are still working hard with partner organisations – making the most of our pooled skills and resources to move the campaign forward by implementing a detailed campaign strategy. We continue to oppose the plans for a temporary licensing system for circuses with wild animals as only a ban will do. We maintain that a ban could be brought in quickly and easily under the Animal Welfare Act and that the timescale of “prior to the next general election” is not soon enough. We continue to support local grassroots activists who are making positive changes on the ground. Each day, we move a small step closer to the long-overdue ban.

The situation is far from perfect but we remain hopeful that, with continued pressure, we will see wild animals out of circuses once and for all. But we can only achieve this aim with your continued support.

Stick with us and click below to see how you can help.

How you can help:

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“Eleventh hour” meeting with Minister on circuses provides some, but not all, of the vital answers on the ban

You might have seen yesterday that we, along with all of the other leading welfare organisations working on the circus ban campaign confirmed that we will not be engaging with the Government’s consultation on proposals to license the use of wild animals in circuses. There are numerous reasons for this boycott but, ultimately, it boils down to one very simple one:

Licensing will not protect animals from suffering – only a ban will do.

Over the past few months, we have done all we can to get to the bottom of the plans for licensing and understand why the Government is proceeding down this path when a ban is now deemed possible. No matter how hard we tried though, we seemed to be blocked at every turn. In response to our concern that Government papers suggested that the proposed temporary licensing regime appeared to be designed to be very much more permanent than we had been led to believe, a senior Defra official said: “I am not aware we have ever suggested that the licensing scheme would be a ‘temporary’ measure...”.


To say this response set alarm bells ringing would be an understatement: it was clear that the Government’s stated intention to ban and its proposals for licensing were completely at odds with one another. One approach told a hopeful story of animals being free from circus suffering within three years and the other saw them languishing in the big top, with a government seal of approval, for at least the next ten years.  Which were we to believe?

We had been kept waiting for months to secure a meeting with the Minister responsible for the circus issue and were finally given a slot at the “eleventh hour” – just two days before the end of the consultation period. So it was that, yesterday afternoon, Gavin Grant, CEO of the RSPCA, Harvey Locke, former president of the British Veterinary Association, Will Travers, CEO of the Born Free Foundation and I attended the long-awaited meeting with Lord Taylor. We were all hoping for some straight answers on the ban.

I have to admit, given the failure of Government to give us any satisfactory answers to date, I didn’t go into the meeting feeling particularly optimistic. I am, however, pleased to say that we all came out feeling that there is hope and I wanted our supporters to be the first to know what was discussed.

Reason for hope #1: The Minister confirmed that licensing will be temporary and that there will be ban before the end of this Government’s term. With the general election likely to happen in 2015, it is two or three years longer than we (or the animals) would hope for, but is better than a ten-year (or permanent) licensing system.

Reason for hope #2: The Minister confirmed that the ban will apply to all wild animals in circuses. There will be no “grandfather” clause allowing animals already in circuses to remain. From the date of the ban, it will be illegal for wild animals to be used in the travelling circus environment.

Reason for hope #3: Importantly, we had been concerned that asking the circus industry to invest significant resources into meeting licensing regulations only to make the practice illegal two years later would be open to challenge and would create new obstacles to a ban. The Minister’s simple answer was that it would be the circuses’ choice to invest or not, that the industry has been forewarned and so makes any investment in the full knowledge that it is for a limited timeframe. We hope that this important clarification will lead the circuses to consider retiring the animals now, rather than make investment for the sake of just a few more seasons.

There were, however, things we couldn’t agree on:
Reason for concern #1: The Government proposes a ban via primary legislation. Whilst we are not opposed to this approach per se, primary legislation will take a long time to implement and we argued that a ban under the Animal Welfare Act would speed up the process drastically, reducing the suffering for the animals. On this point though, it seems that Government will not be moved.

Reason for concern #2: We stand by our opposition to licensing. It won’t protect the animals and is a complicated and expensive short-term stop gap which takes focus away from work towards the ban. On this point too, it seems the Government is determined and that licensing will go ahead regardless of its lack of support.

On the whole, it was a productive discussion. I believe that everyone in the meeting felt a small step forward had been taken and some of the confusion had been cleared up. I won’t go so far to say that I am ready to celebrate just yet though. It is undeniable that there have been some seriously mixed messages coming out of the Government department as well as a failure to properly engage with key stakeholders. We maintain our view that the consultation is fundamentally flawed and the licensing regime will not work. We still have two or three years before we see animals safe which is two or three years too long. None of these points give us reason to celebrate, but continue to offer serious cause for concern.


On the other hand, and the most important point that I took from the meeting, is that I do now believe that the intention to ban is genuine. What remains to be seen, of course, is that ban being put into practice. We have offered Government our full support in working towards achieving this aim and, until it happens, we will continue to do all that we can to ensure that we hold the Minister to his word.

We will, of course, be keeping our supporters fully up to date with developments as and when they happen.