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7:45 p.m. Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Atlanta committee approves ordinance permitting bullhooks

By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Yes, the circus – with its array of elephants -- is coming back to Atlanta.

Despite heavy opposition from PETA and animal rights advocates, the city of Atlanta’s public safety committee on Tuesday voted 5-2 to approve a new animal control ordinance that would allow circuses, including Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and UniverSoul Circus, to continue the use of bullhooks to control, manage and train the animals within city limits.

Opponents argued that the use of the bullhook -- a cane-like rod that typically consists of a steel hook and point attached to a three-foot-long handle -- crossed the line of animal cruelty and abuse and have pressed local governments to ban the tool. It is usually inserted into the elephant's skin to make it behave in a certain manner.

Depending on whom you ask, it is a training tool, or a tool for torture.

“There are two uses for a bullhook,” said Delcianna Winders, director of captive animal law enforcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “To inflict pain or to present the fear of pain. A bullhook is not going to keep people safe. If an elephant decides to rampage, a bullhook is not going to stop it.”

If approved next Monday by the full city council, the ordinance would give Atlanta its own set of animal control rules.

Last year, Fulton became the first Georgia jurisdiction to ban bullhooks, following cities and counties in Florida, South Carolina, New York, Kentucky and Indiana. The ban was supposed to apply only to unincorporated south Fulton, the only area commissioners have direct governance over. County officials said then that if Atlanta wanted to forbid the use of bullhooks, the City Council would have to adopt its own ordinance.

This past February, just as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus was coming to Atlanta, a Fulton Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the county's ban on the use of bullhooks by circus elephant trainers in Atlanta.

More than 90,000 people attended the circus over two weeks at Philips Arena.

At the time, county officials threatened to stop providing animal control services in the city, including picking up dead, stray or dangerous animals.

David Bennett, a senior policy advisor for Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, said Fulton would now enforce Atlanta’s rules within city limits. Those rules would mirror Fulton except for one thing – allowing the use of the bullhook.

“The action today puts Atlanta in control of its own animal control rules,” Bennett said. “Instead of being obligated to enforce Fulton rules, we now have our own.”

City officials feared that in banning the use of bullhooks, the circus would bypass Atlanta.

Crystal Drake, of Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Brothers, would not go so far as to say that the circus would have not returned to Atlanta next year if the ban remained in place, but added: “At no point do we want to jeopardize our license by not using bullhooks.”

“The proper us of bullhooks is a long-standing animal husbandry technique if used properly with verbal cues and an awards based training system,” Drake said. “Activists have it wrong. These animals are large.”

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