The rodeo displays and encourages brutal treatment of animals and insensitivity to their suffering. Like dogfighting and cockfighting, rodeo is a form of entertainment grounded in violence. Every major animal welfare organization in America is opposed to rodeo.

At the rodeo in Davie, Florida (photo by Emilio Labrador).

Rodeo Events: The Violent Abuse of Animals
During the steer-wrestling event, cowboys compete to brutally wrestle animals to the ground as fast as possible. Steers are subjected to painful tail-twisting to make them run from chutes. In the calf-roping event (renamed "tie-down roping" to deflect criticism), animals running as fast as they can are snapped to a stop by a lasso tightened around their necks. In bronc riding or bull riding events, the animals are physically provoked into displaying “wild” behavior through the use of bucking straps, spurs or electric prods. Take away the tail-twisting, the electro-shock prods and bucking straps, and you take away the rodeo.

Please, never attend a rodeo!

Silver Spurs Rodeo
The Silver Spurs Rodeo is a semi-annual event at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee. The rodeo claims to be "the largest rodeo in the Southeast." On ARFF's YouTube page, we have posted disturbing video taken at the Silver Spurs rodeo in February 2011.

View the video here.

The video shows a steer during the team roping event cruelly punished after resisting attempts to guide him into the chute. In the video, rodeo staff can be seen punching the animal and roughly twisting the animal’s tail over a steel bar. Cow’s tails are sensitive; twisting, pulling and raking a tail back and forth over a bar is extremely painful.

- During the video, the rodeo announcer can be heard thanking the Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau for its support of the rodeo. Please write to the Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau and urge them to reconsider their sponsorship of the Silver Spurs Rodeo. Ask them to watch the video, and ask if they condone this abuse.

• Tom Lang, Director
Kissimmee Convention & Visitors Bureau
1925 E. Irlo Bronson Memorial Hwy.
Kissimmee, FL 34744
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