Two sides lock horns over ethics
The rodeo season is about to come to an end, but some questions behind the ethics of it linger on. Carly Thomas talked to both sides in what is becoming an increasingly contentious sport.
When you dip down into the valley where the Bird family farms, their whole world opens up. The rolling folds of land before you are their universe and the bulls you see grazing the big open paddocks are their pride and joy.
Two generations work this land, but the focus is not breeding beef for the meat market.It’s breeding bulls that buck bigger, better and longer.
The Birds are in the game of bull riding and it’s the thing they live and breathe. There’s not much in their day-to-day that doesn’t join back up with bull riding eventually.
Something though, has changed for them lately. They are finding themselves more and more in the firing line of animal rights activists, who point the finger directly at the Bird’s livelihood.
Animal rights groups are adamant that bull riding is abuse. They say it is an unnecessary practice and they are hell-bent on getting rodeos shut down.
Their efforts have ramped up over the past few years and their approach has gained ground in the public eye. Google search ‘‘bull riding’’ in New Zealand and you won’t have to scroll too far before you see video footage of what campaigners are calling cruelty.
Shane Bird is the North Island club director for the New Zealand Rodeo Cowboys Association. He has been around rodeo since he started riding bulls as a teenager and went on to be a bull fighter and bull breeder. The scene is what he knows.
Allegations of animal cruelty get him and his father, Roger Bird, angry. They feel aggrieved by the information the activists circulate. And it’s inescapable, it’s in their faces at events and at their backs as new claims continue to arise. And the allegations are big. Marianne MacDonald is the campaigns manager for SAFE, a national animal rights organisation.
Rodeos, she says, provide entertainment for a minority and need to be stopped.
‘‘It is time to focus on teaching values of respect and compassion to impressionable children, making clear to them that tormenting animals is wrong. Towns and cities across New Zealand have so much to offer both locals and tourists, without causing harm to animals. We encourage people to embrace alternative forms of entertainment.’’
At every rodeo on this year’s bull riding circuit, there has been an animal rights presence. MacDonald says SAFE strongly urges people not to condone cruelty by attending rodeo.
‘‘Rodeo is essentially bullying animals for entertainment. Normally docile bulls are induced into aggressive behaviour by painful or irritating means such as flank straps, electric prods, tail twisting and painful spurs – leading to aggravated and enraged animals who will perform.’’
As the spokesman of New Zealand rodeo, Shane Bird is well used to fronting up to the activists. It’s with a resigned look that he explains that if the bulls were terrified ‘‘they wouldn’t perform. They would run away. They wouldn’t buck and we don’t want that’’.
Roger says it’s the cowboys that are terrified, not the bulls.
‘‘If you pit an 800 or 900-kilogram animal against an 80 or 90kg man, who’s going to win? When you let that animal out of the chute into the arena with somebody on its back, who’s in control? The bull. ‘Cos he’s got all the power.’’
Shane goes on to lay down some facts about the fundamentals of bull riding as a way of addressing the complaints.
‘‘The flank strap goes around the flank and it’s not tied really tight. It’s barely snug. It’s there to give a controlled style of bucking, because if they didn’t have a flank strap, they could just come out and run and be all crazy, and then they could hurt themselves or run into the fence. They say it’s tight, but it’s not, and they say we put the testicles up in there, but how many people have tried to claim ACC for putting bulls testicles up in a rope? None.’’ He smiles wearily and shrugs. ‘‘It’s all based on what they think is happening. None of them have been here to see the animals on the farm. They just put out what they want the public to believe.’’
And there’s the thing, the further you go down the track of looking at both points of view, things eventually come back full circle.
At the centre of that circle? Two opposing forces who believe passionately they are right.
This becomes very apparent when I discuss with MacDonald a piece of footage that has been doing the rounds on social networks. It was filmed by an animal activist at a Parklee bull ride held at Manfeild in Feilding two years ago.
There is a bull in a pen and a group of cowboys are cajoling it. MacDonald says it is to ‘‘upset the animal and make them act in a wild way. These are domesticated animals and they want them to perform by causing stress to make them seem wild. But it is all a show’’.
But Bird explains the slapping, electric prodding and tail twisting as the cowboys getting a stubborn bull to move forward from the pen to the chute.
‘‘What’s the point in getting the bull fired up in the chute? The competition doesn’t start until it gets out of the chute, so when they say we were doing that to get it wild, it doesn’t make sense. And that bull is in a lead-up race, not a chute. The gate was open into the chute, but they don’t like to make that bit clear. We use a prodder when we need to, but we don’t activate it every time. So in that video it was activated two, maybe three times.’’
Roger shakes his head. It makes him visibly upset.
‘‘It is very different from the way they tell it. Very different. They don’t want to know what actually happens.’’
The Rodeo code of welfare states that electric prodders must not be used on animals other than adult cattle and they can be used if a bull is being moved and it has somewhere to go. But animal welfare organisations such as the Wellington Animal Rights Network think the use of an electric prod is wrong in any circumstance.
Spokesman Paul Christeller compares electrocuting a bull to doing the same to a 4-year-old child.
‘‘You wouldn’t would you? My approach to animal advocacy is that there is no moral distinction between human and animals. Society need to have an urgent conversation about the pain we inflict on non-human animals for trivial gain. There is no justification for it.’’
The Birds are adamant their bulls are treated well and get a good life. They breed bucking bulls for the rodeo circuit and say their animals live at Parklee for years.
‘‘Whereas a breeding bull will live for six to eight months and then he goes to the works, our bulls buck for one round and then they get to chill out here with shade and water and cows. We look after our bulls,’’ Shane says.
MacDonald says she understands it is a way of life, but feels bull riding practices have become so ingrained that those carrying them on can’t see that it could be wrong.
‘‘For them, it’s a family tradition, but unfortunately it’s a tradition of animal cruelty. I don’t think they see the pain that they are causing to those animals. I can understand when people have done something for a number of years and they have made a career from it that it is hard for them to see the distress they are putting those bulls through.’’
Bird, unsurprisingly, has the opposite view.
‘‘[The activists] are so caught up in their own little world. It’s them expressing their opinion and they are cowards. They won’t come and talk to me. Come and see, come and see.’’
Two worlds, both with their own arguments and points and beliefs. Shane says the rodeo crowd is like a family and treat each other, and the bulls, with respect.
‘‘In bull riding it’s not about beating the bull. It’s how long you perform together. It’s how long you stay on. We are working with the bull, not against it.’’
Huntly rodeo was forced to close its doors after receiving animal welfare warnings from the Ministry for Primary Industries, while Auckland City Council has stopped allowing rodeo events on its land.
More than 60,000 people signed a national petition delivered to Parliament last year calling for a ban on rodeo and 59 per cent of the respondents to a recent Horizon poll were in favour of a ban.
The ministry and the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee rejected the petition, saying they were satisfied the Rodeo Code of Welfare was sufficient, and that it was being complied with.
Bird says he will front up to whatever claims they make and points out that for the past two years, SAFE has submitted to the ministry ‘‘video footage that was cut and pasted and all directed the way they wanted it to look’’.
For the Bird family, well, life goes on for them. And it’s a way of life they’ll be holding on to, no matter what.
‘‘When you let that animal out of the chute into the arena with somebody on its back, who's in control?’’ Roger Bird