On March 15 in the Ohio Supreme Court an animal-rights group's effort to force Ohio State University to release animal-testing records failed thumpingly. A couple of weeks earlier a federal court in New Jersey convicted animal-rights thugs for inciting violence in their effort to shut a medical research facility. Science triumphed over these reactionaries. Also in March a Northern-Virginia jury exonerated the owner of Ringling Brothers' Circus from charges that he and company executives wiretapped PETA headquarters and stole PETA documents.
The Ringling Brothers case is significant because PETA has used the courts to harass the circus for years. In this case the circus owner, Kenneth Feld, was willing to face PETA's charges in court. Had PETA merely complained to the press people might have believed that Feld maintained a vast spy ring against his harassers. In court their evidence was dismissed as nonsense.
Actually their whole case is nonsense. Circus animals are as highly prized by animal trainers as domestic pets are by their owners -- perhaps more so. After all, the trainers' livelihood depends on these animals. Cruelty towards animals exists to be sure, but it is unlikely that trainers who spend their entire lives around animals would be cruel to them. More likely such trainers have affection and even admiration for their animals much as a hunter has affection and admiration for his hunting dog. Then too it is unlikely a cruel trainer would be successful with his animals, and it is even unlikelier that a cruel trainer's cruelty would go unnoticed in such a high-profile position.
Every year for decades ordinary Americans have taken their families to the circus. One wonders what PETA's nuisances would suggest as a humane alternative for the children who thrill to the mighty elephants and the gigantic cats. How about suggesting that Ringling Brothers use artificial animals? Surely in this high-tech world someone can come up with a robotic elephant. Or maybe just use stuffed animals. Kids love their stuffed teddy bears. Yet I doubt such alternatives would soothe the folks at PETA. They are public nuisances, but the law is catching up with them.