Irina Novozhilova (VITA): 'In training elephants and tigers, hooks and electric shockers have to be used. Circus is always cruel beyond limits, and circus with animals should be banned.'
SVETLANA SKARBO: ‘The Togni circus have already twice covered the distance equivalent to a trip from London to Russia’s easternmost city of Pevek, and their journey is not over yet. Last September they set off from Kazan in Republic of Tatarstan, and continued moving east getting to places which no other elephant circus has ever reached. In July this year people in Yakutsk, Russia’s capital of permafrost and diamonds, were stunned to see female elephants Roni and Carla on a casual walk about the city.
To reach the world’s coldest city, the circus was on the road for ten months, leaving behind cities like Izhevsk, Nizhny Tagil, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Russia’s Pacific capital Vladivostok. Every one of this cities enjoyed several days, in some cases weeks, of performances. Social media went into a happy overdrive with pictures of beautifully trained animals and their human colleagues working in seemingly perfect harmony… Italy banned animals circuses in Autumn 2017, which might explain why the Togni circus decided to embark on this astonishingly long journey around Russia.
Flagging the fact of ‘inevitable’ cruelty in training elephants and tigers, where hooks and electric shockers have to be used, Irina Novozhilova, from Russian VITA animal rights protection organisation, said: ‘Circuses that go on tours travel for hundreds of kilometres. ‘Little known is that there is a quota for anaesthesia for animals.’ ‘It means that should something happens, the existing quota will not be enough for even a single elephant’. ‘If an elephant breaks its leg, there will be no way to anaesthetise it.’ She said: ’Circus is always cruel beyond limits, and circus with animals should be banned’.’ SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: