Dear editor:
Animals should not be injured or killed for entertainment and that is what rodeo is. It bears no resemblance to ranching.
I grew up on a cattle ranch in North Dakota and spent 8 years as a ranch veterinarian there. My ranch clients did not ride bulls, speed rope calves or make their expensive horses buck. Rodeo is not American "tradition".
As a former bareback bronc rider, pathologist and large animal veterinarian, I have both the experience and autopsy proof that rodeo injures and kills animals.
Dr. Robert Bay from Colorado autopsied roping calves and found hemorrhages, torn muscles, torn ligaments, damage to the trachea, damage to the throat and damage to the thyroid. These calves never get a chance to heal before they are used again.
Calves roped repeatedly in the practice pens suffer constant pain and injuries to their necks. Meat inspectors including Drs. Haber and Fetzner who processed rodeo animals found broken bones, ruptured internal organs, massive amounts of blood in the abdomen from ruptured blood vessels and damage to the ligamentum nuchae that holds the neck to the rest of the spinal column.
Dr. C. G. Haber, a veterinarian with thirty years of experience as a USDA meat inspector, stated "The rodeo folks send their animals to the packing houses where I have seen cattle so extensively bruised that the only areas in which the skin was attached was the head, neck, legs, and belly.
I have seen animals with six to eight ribs broken from the spine and at times puncturing the lungs. I have seen as much as two and three gallons of free blood accumulated under the detached skin."
Animals and humans share the same pain and fear centers in the brain. The fear center is the amygdala. The pain centers are the pre-frontal cortex and the thalamus. Animals feel pain and fear the same as humans!
As a former state criminal lawyer, we prosecutors have all had cases where criminals have abused and tortured animals before abusing or killing humans.
What are we teaching our children when we cheer when a calf roper knocks down and drags by the neck a bawling calf?
Kids cry at rodeos. Time to end animal abuse at rodeos.
Sincerely,
Peggy W Larson, DVM MS JD
Williston, Vermont
