Animal in Circuses: Regulation Not Banning

“Good regulations based on internationally accepted standards for animal care and transport are the most appropriate way to ensure high quality animal care while at the same time preserving the rich and rewarding classical circus art form for the benefit of circus families, their animals and current and future generations of Europeans.” H.S.H. Prince Rainier III of Monaco

Logically, any basis for a ban on animal keeping should be assessed on the available evidence that relates to the actual welfare of the animals contained within these enterprises. Unfortunately, despite the government conceding that there is no such evidence, the UK government has given in to the propaganda of the animal-rights movement and wishes to ban wild animals in circuses on dubious 'ethical' grounds.

"...The 2007 Radford Report on circus animals concluded that there was insufficient scientific evidence to demonstrate that traveling circuses are unable to meet the welfare needs of wild animals presently being used in the United Kingdom. That position has not changed. Consequently, we are now looking at the means by which a ban could be introduced on ethical ground..."

WRITTEN MINISTERIAL STATEMENT. Minister of State for Agriculture and Food (James Paice) 1 March 2012

I have been involved in the care of animals for over 40 years in zoos and wildlife parks both in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands and am currently an international zoological consultant and also a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. Moreover, I am familiar with a number of trainers and owners of animals in various circuses in the UK and Europe.

It has always been my contention that circuses with animals should have regulation of their care and handling of animals as is the case in many European countries which now includes the United Kingdom since 2012.

The welfare of Wild Animals in Traveling Circuses (England) Regulations 2012

However, I have never supported a ban of animals in circuses as from the scientific evidence (and from personal observation) this seems both unnecessary and unfair to responsible circuses that do take their welfare obligations towards their animals seriously. There have been two reports commission on the welfare of animals in UK circuses.

The first was undertaken by Dr Marthe Kiley-Worthington and published in 1990 with the financial support of the RSPCA and The Universities Federation of Animal Welfare (UFAW).

Dr Kiley-Worthington spent some 18 months studying all aspects of animals in circuses, including making detailed quantitative recordings of their behaviour for over 3000 animal hours Her conclusions were that circuses were by their nature not cruel and that any deficits in the husbandry of the animals within these environments could be addressed without the need of banning such enterprises.

To quote her:

"..there is no reason why circus training, any more than any other animal training, of its nature causes suffering and distress to the animals, or should be considered ethically unacceptable" (Kiley-Worthington, 1990, p. 142).”


Dr Kiley-Worthington’s report ANIMALS in CIRCUSES and ZOOS is HERE

Dr Kiley-Worthington's Paper for the UFAW 1989 Animal Training Symposium is HERE

A further circus animal welfare report was commissioned by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in 2007 and stated:

“A ban on using wild animals in travelling circuses because of welfare concerns is not supported by the scientific evidence”

They concluded that there was "little evidence" that the welfare of animals kept in travelling circuses was any better or worse than that of animals kept in other captive environments. Direct link to the DEFRA report HERE


Moreover, other empirical research has been undertaken by other academics in other countries that support Dr Martha Kiley-Worthington's conclusions.

In the United States Dr Ted Friend, Professor of Animal Science at Texas A&M University at College Station, Texas has undertaken numerous studies on elephants and big cats within American circuses (publications cited in the reference section).

In 2009 he wrote a letter to the South African Department of the Environment regarding proposed restrictions on elephant management. In this letter, he clearly states:

“...My research has clearly indicated that circuses are not inherently detrimental to the welfare of elephants. My experience with circuses in North America concurs with the conclusions of Marthe Kiley-Worthington’s 1990 study of elephants in British circuses. To quote her conclusion: “The welfare of the animals in British circuses, as judged by physical and psychological criteria, is not as a rule inferior to that of other animal husbandry systems such as in zoos, private stables and kennels...It is irrational to take a stand against circuses on grounds that the animals in circuses necessarily suffer, unless they are to take the same stand against zoos, stables, race horses, kennels, pets and all other animal-keeping systems.” ...”

In the above video, Dr Ted Friend is discussing his research at the Italian Senate.

In Germany, Dr Immanuel Birmelin undertook research into stress levels in circus animals such as elephants (Birmelin, 2011), African lions (Birmelin, Albonetti and Bammert, 2012) and tigers (Birmelin, 2012).

He looked at the analysis of salivary cortisol in these animals when statically housed and prior to and after being transported. The results showed no statistical difference, suggesting the animals were not exhibiting physiological signs of stress.

Excerpt from a German TV show, where a scientific experiment was conducted by Dr Immanuel Birmelin to see if lion trainer Martin LaceyJr's animals suffered from stress when in transit from their booking at the 2010 Monte Carlo Circus Festival. The experiment appears to debunk the fundamental argument put forward by the opponents of animal circuses. Contrary to the opinion of the RSPCA and others the science seems to show that in this instance these circus animals do not experience high levels of stress when being transported over long distances. Dr Birmelin also conducted research with circus elephants which can be found HERE.

The Dorning, Harris and Pickett Survey

In 2015 the Welsh assembly decided to commission Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University to review the welfare of wild animals in circuses. This was controversial due to Harris and Dorning having previously worked for various animal rights organizations. Harris had also previously published a paper condemning wild animals in circuses. Therefore the objectivity of any review was questionable.

The review actually was a survey sent to interested parties. Unfortunately, it contains many loaded questions and some of these demonstrated that the researchers had a limited understanding of animal training or operant conditioning. At no time was any actual empirical research undertaken directly observing animals in circuses and assessing their welfare.

When the reviews published its conclusions were not unsurprisingly negative about the welfare of wild animals in circuses and recommended that they should be banned.

One of the experts that Harris et al cited was Dr Ted Friend in the United States who actually studied animals in circuses and had published his research in peer review journals. Dr Friend was unimpressed with the results of the survey and wrote a damming letter to the Welsh Assembly complaining that his work had been misreported and distorted by Harris et al. Letter linked HERE.

It should be further noted that Professor Harris has now taken early retirement from Bristol University for reasons that are unclear. It should also be noted that he and his fellow author of the survey are supporters of the animal rights industry and not an objective, independent scientists. In fact, his involvement as an "independent witness" with the animal rights industry led to a court case he was involved in being dismissed by the judge citing that you did not consider that Professor Harris was an independent and objective witness.

As it stands Dr Kiley-Worthinton report (which involved her spending many months directly observing animals in British circuses) remains the most comprehensive empirical research into the welfare of these animals.

More background details regarding this survey can be found HERE

The Ethical Dimension.

Due to the problems of various legislators not being able to push through a ban based on animal welfare they decided to try and secure a ban using ethics.
But even here, none of these legislators engaged in any form of formal or academic ethics review. The only ethics academic to comment about these bans (Professor Ron Beadle who is Professor of Organisation and Business Ethics at Northumbria University) did not support these legislators position and opposed such a ban. His written submission to the Scottish government is reproduced in appendix 1 of this blog.

The British, Scotish and Welsh Parliamentary Progress of a Ban

Scotland has announced it will ban wild animals in circuses and this came into force in May 2018.

On 1 May 2019 Michael Gove, the Minister for the Environment to the British government, announced that he intends to ban wild animals in circuses after various failures of a number of private MP's trying to enact legislation. An act entitled the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 was introduced to Parliament on the same day. If the Act passes through the Parliamentary process it will come into force on 20 January 2020. NB: In the terms of this act “wild animal” means an animal of a kind which is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain.In July 2019 Wales has announced it intends to ban wild animals in circuses.



References

Birmelin, I. (2011) The use of salivary cortisol to assess the welfare of elephants. International Elephant and Rhino Conservation and Research Symposium. The Rotterdam Zoo

Birmelin, I, Tessy Albonetti, T. Bammert, W.J. (2013) Can lions adapt to the conditions of zoo and circus? (Konnen sich Lowen an die Haltungsbedingungen von Zoo und Zirkus anpassen?) Office Veterinary Service and Food Control Vol 20.

Birmelin, I (2012) Investigations on the employment and transport of the circus.

German Society For Zoo Animals, Wild Animals And Exotic Medicine Conference. Rostock: Germany

Friend, T. H. and Bushong, D. (1996). Abstract. Stereotypic behavior in circus elephants and the effect of "anticipation" of feeding, watering and performing. Proceedings of the 30th International Congress of the International Society for Applied Ethology 14-17 August 1996, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

Friend, T. H. (1999). Behavior of picketed circus elephants. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 62:73-88.

Friend, T. H. and M. L. Parker. (1999). The effect of penning versus picketing on stereotypic behavior of circus elephants. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 64:213-225.

Gruber, T. M., T. H. Friend, J. M. Gardner, J. M. Packard, B. Beaver, and D. Bushong. (2000). Variation in stereotypic behavior related to restraint in circus elephants. Zoo Biology 19:209-221.

Kiley-Worthington, M. (1990). Animals in circuses and zoos: Chiron's world? Pitsea: Little Eco Farms Publishing.

Krawczel, P.D., T.H. Friend and A. Windom. (2006). Stereotypic behavior of circus tigers: Effects of performance. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. 95:189-198.

Nevill, C. H. and T. H. Friend. (2003). The behavior of circus tigers during transport. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 82:329-337.

Nevill, C. H., T. H. Friend and M. J. Toscano. (2004). Survey of transport environments of circus tiger (Panthera Tigris) acts. Journal of the Zoo and Wildlife Medicine 35:167-174.

Nevill, C. H. and T. H. Friend. (2006). A preliminary study on the effects of limited access to an exercise pen on stereotypic pacing in circus tigers. Applied Animal Behaviour Science.101:355-361.

Toscano, M. J., T. H. Friend and C. H. Nevill. (2001) Environmental conditions and body temperature of circus elephants transported during relatively high and low temperature conditions. Journal of the Elephant Managers Association 12:115-149

Williams, J. L. and T. H. Friend. (2003). Behavior of circus elephants during transport. Journal of the Elephant Managers Association 14:8-11.




Appendix I


Re: Call for Evidence on Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (Scotland) Bill

Professor Ron Beadle who is Professor of Organisation and Business Ethics at Northumbria University.

Introduction

This is a response to the invitation by the Committee for Calls for Written Evidence on the Bill and specifically in respect of:

‘The ethical basis for the Bill, as opposed to other justifications such as animal welfare’

The Bill is proposed not as an animal welfare measure but rather on ‘ethical’ grounds and I will therefore first address the question of ethical justification as such before turning to the relationship between ethics and welfare and then to the particularities of the Bill.

I am writing as a Professor of Organisational and Business Ethics whose empirical research concentrates on the travelling circus. Examples of my research include my 2017 award of research funding from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust for a study on the career choices of circus performers and previous studies have been published in academic journals including ‘The Journal of Business Ethics’. I co-convene the ‘Circus Research Network’ (Britain and Ireland).

In the interests of full disclosure, I should also state that my brother and two nieces work in travelling circus and that I have been a Liberal Democrat Councillor in Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council since 1996.

Ethics as Justification

Ethics understood as the systemisation of ideas about proper conduct, right and wrong, good and evil operates at a number of levels in human action. It manifests in emotional responses, ongoing preferences and it animates civil and political action. Crucially it also provides resources for justifying decisions and when used in this way it can be understood as a particular type of decision-making practice with its own history, norms and requirements that are equivalent to but operate in a different domain from other decision-making processes from rules of logic to cost-benefit analysis, smart systems and many others. The implication of this is that when one claims ‘an ethical basis’ for anything whatsoever, one must observe the relevant norms and requirements just as one must observe relevant routines in conducting an investment appraisal.

In all of these cases, the history of the practices is one in which challenge to existing norms and the development of new norms is a regular occurrence. However, for new norms to displace old requires that an account can be given for why the use of this or that system is understood as preferable to those of its predecessors. The result is that for practices involving decision-making (sciences, arts, games and so on) one can provide a narrative account both of the development of such practices and of the conceptualizations of their goods and purposes in light of which a new approach, a new technology, a new understanding of relevant questions and so on, have displaced its predecessors. At the same time one can also determine the boundary conditions within which such fields of endeavour exist and indeed, must exist for the type of ongoing practice and dialogue to be meaningful. Certain presupposition must be shared between practitioners and decision-makers in each and every domain for such practices to be intelligible.

It is important then to know what the norms and requirement are for specifically ‘ethical’ action justification for if, as I shall argue, the action justification falls outside the relevant norms and requirements, then we can only conclude that the action is not intelligible in its own terms.

What then are the norms and requirements for ethical justification? In the four pages that respondents are allowed under Parliamentary procedures it is not feasible to provide an exhaustive list but one shared feature of all systems of ethical justification is that they be generic. What this means is that from the first annotation of systematic ethical rules in religious texts up to and including classical sources in ethics, the scholastic medieval tradition and post-enlightenment deontological and utilitarian traditions which inform such contemporary notions as rights and welfare; every ethical system has sought general, and most often universal, application. It is this presupposition that informs so much of our taken-for–granted assumptions such as the self-defeating nature of hypocrisy, the rejection of retrospective legislation, opposition to arbitrary judgement and so on.

In order to claim that either a rule, such as the prohibition on murder or a utilitarian calculus such as is used to determine the introduction of new medical treatments, is ‘ethical’, one must also claim that this prohibition or this procedure applies to all relevant cases, and for the most influential post–Enlightenment ethicists, Kant and Jeremy Bentham, this has meant – in all cases. Indeed, a centrepiece of Kant’s ethics is that the only ethical rules are those that are both universal and binding. By universal, we mean that whole, relevant categories are treated in the same way.

The Animal Rights movement is a contemporary example of this. Seminal to this movement is Peter Singer’s text ‘Animal Liberation’ (Harper Collins: 1975), which has proven both highly durable and influential. Singer combines a utilitarian commitment to weighing harms and benefits with an understanding of human and non-human animals that experience of pleasure and pain as having equivalent moral status. In other words, he expands the universality of the utilitarian calculus to all sentient creatures. This is a book of ethics in part because of the universality of its claims. Those who concur with Singer’s premises must and often do then commit themselves to veganism, to not keeping pets, to not wearing or otherwise using animal products and so on. They do so consistently because they are acting on a binding moral rule.

Such is the nature of ethical discourse and practice; ethics must be universal or it ceases to be ethics. Even those post-modernists who have critiqued Enlightenment ethics, of whom Jacques Derrida is probably the most note-worthy, have created their own universality condition for their understanding of ethics – in Derrida’s case the category of the ethical only comes in to play in the face of dilemmas so intractable that moral rules cannot guide us. Derrida’s reasoning of course differs markedly from Singer’s and Kant’s but all are ethicists in that all are engaged in locating generic conditions in which rules or procedures must be consistently applied.

The conclusion to be drawn from this necessarily brief introduction is that to claim that that some decision, some result of reasoning, and indeed some piece of legislation, has an ‘ethical’ basis, is to claim that its exercise should have universal application. Having established grounds for this argument I turn next to the distinction between the ethical basis claimed for the Bill and the grounds of animal welfare.

Ethics and Animal Welfare

The claim that the basis for the Bill is ‘ethical’ rather than on ‘welfare grounds’ is relatively straightforward to understand because it is clear that there are insufficient welfare grounds to provide warrant for prohibition. As has been noted in the SPICe Briefing (p7), the Radford Report “concluded that there appears to be little evidence to demonstrate that the welfare of animals kept in travelling circuses is any better or worse than that of animals kept in other captive environments.”

Three types of problem have attended the ‘welfare’ case for prohibition. First, there is a sparsity of evidence, second the evidence that there is points to circus animals successfully engaging in the type of activities that indicate flourishing – crucially including breeding and an extended lifespan and thirdly the conceptualization of welfare is itself contested. Second, if welfare were to be the criterion for animal protection then other activities such as horse-racing in which, according to Animal Aid, over 1500 horses have died in the last decade in the UK and Ireland and organised hunting and fishing provide far stronger cases for legislating on welfare grounds. The Scottish Government is therefore correct to implicitly concur that welfare grounds provide insufficient warrant for prohibition.

If however welfare grounds provide insufficient warrant, the question is whether there are grounds beyond welfare that do provide such warrant and here the Government points to ‘ethical arguments’. Two questions should be asked of this: first, what kind of ethical justification does not involve the welfare of its objects and second, how do such arguments provides sufficient grounds for complete prohibition?

The Government’s policy memorandum outlines 3 arguments (paragraphs 23-25) whose combination, it is claimed, creates a unique ‘challenge to Scottish society’ (p5). The first argument, ‘Impact on respect for animals’ claims that ‘Many people now consider it outdated and morally wrong to make animals perform animals and tricks’ and that animal presentation ‘could inhibit the development of respectful and responsible attitudes towards animals in the future’ (ibid.). There are four problems with these as ‘ethical’ arguments for the Bill. First, the opinion of any number of people provides no ethical warrant for anything whatsoever. People differ enormously on what they consider to be morally blameworthy – the question in ethics is the justification of the opinion, not the opinion itself, no matter how widely it be shared. Second, the concluding argument (p5) is empirically unsupported (hence ‘could’); third, this argument does not differentiate wild from domestic animals and hence provides no coherent grounds for this restriction and fifth, it does not discriminate static from travelling circuses whereas the former are excluded from the purview of the Bill.

The second argument, ‘Impact of travelling environments on an animal’s nature’ (telos)’, is perhaps even less coherent. First, the concept of ‘an animal’s nature’ rests on the notion of the continuity of that nature across environments. The coherence of the argument that an environment might change an animal’s nature undermines the concept on which it depends; that of an unchanging nature. Second, the argument that what is good is what is natural, that ‘ought’ can be derived from ‘is’, which provides the ethical ground for the claim that it is right to leave nature unmolested; is itself highly contentious. Its most celebrated opponent is the great philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, who demonstrated that the assertion that something’s existence guarantees its goodness is logically fallacious – other grounds are needed. Third, the proposition that we should leave nature untouched and allow animals to flourish in their natural environment meets the universality criterion but if we accept it, then we are morally bound by all of its strictures, in the manner of the Jain religion or of fruitarians i.e. that any interference with the natural world is prohibited. The grounds that this argument provides for the prohibition of the exhibition of animals for human entertainment is no stronger and no weaker than the argument for prohibiting the consumption of eggs. We can only coherently use this as an ethical argument if we do both, and much else besides.

The third argument, ethical cost v benefits is not an argument but a decision procedure and to conduct it requires precisely the arguments from welfare which have been shown not to provide sufficient warrant for a ban.

We can conclude that the Government has identified a number of spurious arguments for legislating on non-welfare ethical grounds and makes only two serious arguments: namely the principle of non-interference in the natural world and the manipulation of citizens’ attitudes towards supporting this principle. Far from providing a ‘unique’ combination of grounds that ‘present a cumulative ethical challenge to Scottish society’, the arguments fail to show how any of the particulars of the exhibition of wild animals contravenes an ethical principle that is not also contravened by hunting, fishing, meat-eating, horse-racing, dog shows, falconry, show-jumping, pet-keeping and any and every other human manipulation of animals. The arguments made by Singer do provide a coherent case against all such manipulation but unless that case is accepted in full, and many contest it, there are no ethical grounds independent of animal welfare, that would justify prohibition.

The Ethics of the Bill

I have so far demonstrated (1) that any argument claiming to be ethical must be generic in scope (2) that this Bill is not generic in this way because (3) that the Bill provides no arguments for action that do not apply equally to all forms of human manipulation of animals. The Bill proposes not a ban on the use of animals but only of wild animals, and not a ban on their exhibition in static circuses (for such would apply equally to zoos) but only when they are transported. As the Government notes (p9), there are currently no wild animal acts in Scotland and hence the claim that a phenomenon that does not even exist ‘uniquely, present[s] a cumulative ethical challenge to Scottish society’; is frankly risible.

Liberal democratic societies which adhere to human rights norms do so on the basis of an ethical tradition which limits the rights of governments and majorities to impose their will on fellow citizens. Prohibition of activities and criminalisation of their participants normally and rightly applies only to practices with significant and far reaching effects which are overwhelming in the damage they inflict on citizens. As a result societies have not banned such harmful activities as smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, participating in dangerous sports, and so on.

The question the Committee should ask itself is whether the presentation of wild animals in travelling circuses has such significant, far reaching and overwhelmingly negative effects as to warrant prohibition and thus breach an ethical principle, that of the liberty of the citizen, which genuinely is universal. Many people find animal acts in circus distasteful although it is notable the number of respondents to the consultation – 2,043, is dwarfed by the numbers attending one animal circus – Zippos, every summer in Scotland (c. 70,000). There is a contested ethical argument for banning all manipulation of non-human by human animals but the consensus of the social order we inhabit is that distaste does not provide ground for majorities to impose their will on minorities and that manipulation of non-human by human animals is allowable so long as animal welfare is protected.

In short, there is no sound ethical basis for the prohibition proposed by this Bill.