City Selects New Rules on Rodeo Animals’ Treatment

Over the objections of animal rights groups, the City Council on Tuesday voted to regulate local rodeos according to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Assn.’s guidelines, which opponents say don’t protect animals from inhumane treatment.

“I think we addressed every issue that they had,” Mayor Wyatt T. Hart told a standing-room-only crowd. “We just didn’t go as far as they wanted us to.”

The ordinance, which was passed unanimously, will ban devices such as razor-sharp spurs and caustic ointments, and the use of electric prods in bull riding. It will follow the association’s standards of requiring a veterinarian and animal control officer at a rodeo at all times. And it will prohibit violent techniques such as the “jerk downs” of calves during calf roping.

But it also will allow the use of dulled spurs and flank straps to cause bucking, as well as battery-powered electric prods for herding animals down a chute into the arena.

Eric Mills, a member of Action for Animals who compared rodeos to cockfights, said the “cowboys are there by choice; the animals are not.”

Rodeo supporters maintain the devices are harmless and animals are treated with the utmost care.

“These animals are the prime consideration,” said Becky Dulmage, a member of Friends of the Rodeo. “This ordinance supplies ample protection for animals.”

Jane Garrison, the Dana Point resident who asked the city to adopt rodeo safety regulations, will try to get the issue on the ballot. “I’m appalled that this whole ordinance was written according to the PRCA, which makes $20 million every year on rodeos.”