camille labchuk says YES
The animal rights lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice
It’s clear that using animals for entertainment is rapidly becoming unacceptable. This explains why the Ringling Bros. circus, famous for its elephant shows, was forced to abandon animal acts altogether. Shifting societal attitudes were also behind Canada’s groundbreaking new law that bans keeping whales and dolphins in captivity and outlaws using them in performances for the entertainment of spectators.
What of rodeo? Rodeo events are a spectacle of suffering, offering fleeting entertainment yet causing serious fear, trauma and even death to the animals who are goaded into performing. That’s why rodeo should be the next frontier in the quest to treat animals with the kindness and respect they deserve.
The details of the events vary, but at its core rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment of the animals who are conscripted into the “sport.” Animals are coerced into running or bucking through fear and often pain. Take, for example, tie-down roping, where a terrified calf, just months old, is chased down by a rider on horseback in front of thousands of loudly cheering fans. The calf is stopped in its tracks by a rope yanked tight around its throat, thrown down by the human competitor, and then has its legs roughly bound with rope while lying helpless in the dirt. It’s heartbreaking to imagine the terror the confused calf must experience.
The element of fear in rodeo is especially problematic for cows, calves and horses that are forced to compete, because they are prey animals. They are wired to be nervous, flighty and hyper-alert to protect themselves from predators. Renowned animal behaviourist Temple Grandin has even gone so far as to say the experience of fear for these sensitive animals is likely more unbearable than physical pain.
Worse still, animals used in rodeo are often killed. Well over 100 animals have been killed at the Calgary Stampede alone, many of them horses which are killed after suffering injuries in the notoriously dangerous chuckwagon races. The high-profile Stampede offers a snapshot of the harm inflicted on animals, but additional horses and cows are injured or killed at smaller events and during practice. For instance, last summer a horse was killed in Manitoba after breaking a leg in a bronc riding event, where a rider has to stay atop a horse that is induced to buck by a painful flank strap. Shockingly the event had no veterinarian on hand, nor euthanasia supplies.
The good news is that polling shows a steady decline in public support for using animals in rodeos, with over two-thirds of Canadians against the cruel practice. Even in the western provinces, a majority are opposed. There’s a growing feeling that using animals for abusive and deadly forms of entertainment is no longer acceptable. It’s less a question of whether we should ban rodeo than of when. It’s only a matter of time before the public, the courts and legislators will force rodeo into the pages of our history books, alongside elephant acts and orca shows.
aritha van herk says no
The author of many books, including Mavericks and Stampede and the Westness of West
Ban Rodeo? Not a good idea. The enthusiasm for banning (ban books, ban TikTok, ban abortion) has overtaken civil discourse, reflected in the questionable conduct of those sporting signs expressing desire for sexual impertinence with politicians they despise. Banning rodeo would introduce another polarizing contretemps into increasingly weaponized cultural conflicts. Far better to engage in discussion.
A reflection of the agricultural settler tradition, imbued with the history of mutually beneficial connections between husbandry and survival, rodeo is more ambiguous than a spectator sport. From its Latin root rotare, meaning to rotate, to the Spanish rodear (to surround), rodeo comes around every year to remind us of the dangers of erasing the past. While the Calgary Stampede gets the most intense inspection, rodeos are celebrated across the west, from Brooks to Rockyford, from Wood Mountain to Brandon, from Tisdale to Writing-on-Stone. These are community gatherings, a chance to meet neighbours and newcomers alike, but not picnics looking for a stretch of grass without ants. Animals are key, even more so than their human sidekicks. With events focusing on timed competitions around riding, roping and human/animal coordination, stamina and strength, rodeos demonstrate how people and animals have worked together and challenged one another. And no sport is more scrutinized to ensure humane standards. (If only we followed such rules in our daily encounters.)
The desire to ban arises from a belief that rodeo animals suffer pain and damage, and the events display humans against animals. Such a view, rooted in a contemporary doctrine of antagonism, locates human/animal conjunction as pet ownership. It fails to recognize an important aspect: rodeo showcases humans working with animals. The “entertainment” label implies that the events are rough, deadly. (I blame this assumption on hockey, which is indeed man against man—with sticks.)
Our contemporary myopia about animals reflects an ignorance most noticeable in our attitude toward work, a resistance to getting our hands dirty. We think agriculture is machine-based; we want our food processed into meat analogues; we believe the ancient collaboration between living beings is more petting zoo than survival. In fact, plants and animals together have affected biodiversity and extinction, with much to teach us about change and adaptation.
The human/animal bond is an old one, and, yes, in rodeo, rules should and do change, ensuring that both human and animal suffer as little as possible. No one, least of all working ranch hands, wants to inflict pain or damage on the animals that shape their livelihood. They are correlative athletes.
Like the rodeo horses stamping their feet, eager to compete, every working dog team I saw in the Arctic was happy, much happier than any border collie stuck in an apartment or straining at the end of a leash.
camille labchuk responds to aritha van herk
Aritha van Herk’s defence of rodeo plays up three main themes: that rodeo is part of a proud tradition and community heritage (we’ve always done it); that using animals for rodeo somehow showcases a human/animal bond or symbiotic relationship (they like it); and that rodeo has strong humane standards (it doesn’t hurt).
Let’s start with the heritage, commonly used as the first line of defence to justify socially unacceptable practices, especially abusive spectacles such as rodeo, bullfighting or circuses. Celebrating heritage can be valuable and unifying, but when a tradition is based on domination and offends modern moral values, playing the history card is not a compelling reason to repeat the sins of the past. I shudder to imagine a world where instead of banning child marriage or conversion therapy, we simply engage in “dialogue” about it. This dialogue already exists when it comes to rodeo, a clear matter of controversy. But public discussion hasn’t prevented animals from being hurt and killed every year in these spectacles.
It’s also worth taking a close look at the heritage claim, because modern rodeo events have less to do with western heritage than many people assume. The Calgary Stampede was founded by an American vaudeville and Wild West show performer, who invented chuckwagon racing in 1923. Marketing teams package rodeo as western heritage, but the truth is that events such as bull riding and steer wrestling are far from “authentic” (cows and horses don’t naturally or willingly perform rodeo tricks) and have been distorted to provide high-stakes entertainment.
Celebrations of community heritage and culture can and do exist without rodeo. Most Calgary Stampede attendees already don’t patronize the rodeo ring—they show up for the fun outfits (who doesn’t love a good cowboy hat and boots?), the pancake breakfasts, the music and the rides. Eliminating rodeo would actually strengthen community celebrations by making them more inclusive, because the rodeo events wouldn’t alienate those people who aren’t comfortable watching sensitive horses and cows being coerced into performing.
“Heritage” is commonly used as the first line of defence to justify socially unacceptable practices.
Let’s turn now to the unsupportable idea that rodeo reflects some sort of symbiotic relationship where animals and humans work together and challenge each other. At its core, rodeo is a one-way, exploitative relationship of domination. It’s about showing ways that humans can control and coerce sensitive animals such as horses, calves and cows. Let’s not forget what rodeo is ultimately about: bravado for profit in the form of cash prizes. Rodeos offer huge prize money to the competitors that emerge victorious, and the Calgary Stampede was considered the second-richest rodeo on the continent in 2023.
The one-sidedness of rodeo competitions becomes apparent when you consider the details of how animals are forced to perform. Horses and cows are relatively tame animals that don’t naturally buck, flee or run race tracks, so they must be physically provoked to perform so cowboys can appear to “tame” them to look brave. Rodeos employ a variety of tools to torment animals, including a flank strap used in saddle bronc riding, affixed tightly around a horse’s hind quarters. Unbearably uncomfortable, horses will buck vigorously to escape this torture.
Flank straps can be used in bull riding too, and in a 2018 bull riding event in Chilliwack, the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) documented a competitor holding an electric prod just before a bull was coerced into the ring—these prods can be used to zap an animal to force them to charge out of the chute and start performing for the crowds. In 2022 a team member of a bronc rider competitor repeatedly hit a horse in the face after she resisted leaving the chute at the Calgary Stampede. He faced no legal accountability.
All of this should make clear that rodeo events are not humane and are not better scrutinized, as van Herk asserts, than our own daily encounters. I have yet to meet anyone in my daily life who has attempted to make me flee while they throw a rope around my neck and jerk me to the ground like a baby cow in calf roping.
The truth is that pain and suffering are inherent to rodeo, and so is death. The death toll at the Calgary Stampede is well documented, particularly at the chuckwagon races. According to statistics compiled by the VHS, over 100 animals have died at the Stampede since 1986. While we have less documentation about smaller rodeos and rodeo training, the lethal impact of rodeo is clear.
The undeniable arc of social progress has been toward providing more protections and more respect to vulnerable groups and individuals, and this includes animals. We’re in the midst of a moral revolution on the use of animals in entertainment in particular, and it’s only a matter of time before our laws catch up and make rodeo a memory best left in the past.
aritha van herk responds to camille labchuk
Camille Labchuk calls Rodeo “a spectacle of suffering… causing serious fear, trauma and even death to the animals who are goaded into performing.” It’s entirely appropriate that wild animals shouldn’t be confined for human entertainment, but they occupy a different sphere than domesticated animals, which play a synergistic role in human and ecological relationships. And the declaration that “rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment” is inaccurate. Let’s face facts.
Animals in rodeos are owned by people invested in their care and management; rodeo is where husbandry’s culture, context and history come together. And organizers are held to high standards. The regulations in Alberta’s Animal Protection Act are monitored by various humane societies; they ensure “codes of best practices” are met and veterinarians are on site. Rodeos also welcome researchers working to better understand animal behaviour.
Labchuk says these animals experience a life of deprivation and injury. Fact: the 500 horses who are part of the Stampede’s “Born to Buck” program roam 23,000 acres of open grassland. Every year 200 of them compete in rodeos—eight seconds, no more than 15 times a year, for a total of two minutes.
Labchuk quotes renowned animal behaviourist Temple Grandin on how “the experience of fear for these sensitive animals is likely more unbearable than physical pain.” But this quote is selective. Grandin visited the Stampede in 2011 specifically to look at animal welfare. “I was very pleased with what I saw with the bulls,” she told media. “I went right down there behind the chutes, they’re just as calm as they can be, while they’re putting all the tack on them.… I watched those bulls go out and start bucking… they were not afraid… Also, contrary to popular belief, bucking straps do not go on bulls’ privates, they go around the waist and it’s just a sudden novel stimulus… I was extremely pleased with what I saw with the bulls and the horses.”
Grandin continues: “I’m glad [the Stampede] passed a rule on calf-roping so that they’re not jerking the calf down. That is really good.” Fact: Jerking a calf disqualifies the competitor.
The declaration that “rodeo necessitates cruelty and inhumane treatment” is inaccurate.
Asked what she thinks of rodeo, Grandin responds: “[It] can be done with a good level of welfare. I’m very pleased with the fact that Calgary Stampede has been a leader on having an animal welfare committee… with a trained animal welfare auditor auditing all events. They’ve been serious about bringing about change. I am interested in reforming things, not getting rid of them.”
Rodeos are a way people can learn (a little at least) about animals, agriculture and food. Grandin says “We’ve got a population now totally removed from animals, totally removed from practical things. People don’t know.” She’s right. Too many think that meat comes on plastic trays and that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. We’ve eaten so much processed junk that we don’t understand the origins of food. We refuse to recognize our connection to and, yes, our consumption of animals, preferring a sanitized world where discomfort is erased. We ignore the environmental toll exacted by soybeans (intensively grown; high water needs), nutritional yeast (sugarcane and beets replacing indigenous crops) or other niche ingredients modified to make humans feel virtuous about what they chew and swallow.
Fact: Every year at rodeos, horses die. No one pretends otherwise, but no one wants it to happen. Racehorses are overbred for a single trait, speed, which leads to weak cannon bones and broken legs. In North America 20,000 thoroughbreds are born every year. Half end up in abattoirs because they’re not fast enough. But “failed” racehorses are often bought by chuckwagon teams. Too big or heavy to win on the track, they find a new lease on life. If chuckwagon races were eradicated, an estimated 3,000 more rejected racehorses would be slaughtered or shipped overseas for horsemeat. (And chuckwagon horses enjoy a life that anyone would envy.)
Finally, culture. Rodeos may invite cowboy cosplay, but they also acknowledge history and tradition, the west’s transformation from buffalo to beef. Beyond entertainment, they showcase working animals as athletes and play a critical role in helping everyone better understand the interaction between people and livestock. Rodeo has no interest in cruelty. Why hurt your animal collaborators? Like those who want to ban books without having read them, many wishing to ban rodeo have never seen an event, visited a barn or even touched an animal, let alone mucked out a stall or carried a pail of water.
Let’s ban sugary cereals and ketchup; let’s ban plastic bags and handguns. They do far more harm to humans and animals than rodeo does. The best aspect of rodeo is eliciting curiosity. Let’s not ban that.
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