The Calgary Stampede wrapped up for 2024 with four animals sadly (but predictably) losing their lives in rodeo events. Three horses died as a result of injuries caused by chuckwagon racing, where a team of horses is made to pull a wagon while additional “outlier” horses race behind. Chuckwagon racing is by far the deadliest rodeo event, with more than 70 horses dying in these dangerous chuckwagon races in recent years—including from heart attacks and serious injuries resulting in them being killed.
This year, a young cow also died in a steer wrestling competition—an event where a rodeo competitor chases a terrified steer on horseback, jumps onto the steer, and violently yanks him onto the ground. On July 8, contestant Stetson Jorgensen from Idaho twisted one steer’s neck until the young animal fell to the ground, his legs twitching uncontrollably, obviously suffering from a sickening injury. Stampede officials scrambled to bring out screens to block the audience from seeing the struggling steer, but footage shot by an audience member showed the young cow carried off the field in a stretcher. Stampede officials later confirmed the steer had been killed due to severe injuries.
Unfortunately, animals die almost every year as a result of their forced participation in rodeo events at the Stampede. Since 1986, at least 109 animals have died at the hands of the rodeo. Rodeo events, and in particular chuckwagon racing, are inherently dangerous to the animals forced to participate in them. Even when animals are not injured or killed, rodeo events are premised on causing animals fear and distress to coerce them into running, bucking, or otherwise performing in these cruel spectacles.
Most people have natural empathy for animals and don’t want to see them suffer at human hands for entertainment. Every year, Animal Justice regularly hears from members of the public who question how it can possibly be legal to cause such distress and even death to animals merely for entertainment. Isn’t it against the law to harm and kill animals for kicks, people ask? We say that it is—rodeo events are not above the law, and at least some aspects of rodeo must be illegal.
Provincial Animal Protection Legislation
All Canadian provinces have legislation that prohibits causing distress to animals, or similarly mistreating animals. Most provinces also include exceptions to this, often allowing profit-driven industries to cause distress to animals if done so in accordance with a “generally accepted” practice in that industry.
In Alberta, it’s an offence to cause distress, or permit an animal to be in distress. The only exceptions are if the distress is a) allowed by specific regulations in effect in Alberta, or b) caused due to “reasonable and generally accepted practices” of animal care, management, husbandry and certain specific activities such as slaughter, pest control, or hunting.
Notably missing from any regulations and from the list of activities is rodeo and other activities carried out for the purpose of entertainment. As such, participants in rodeo events are prohibited from causing an animal distress. Rodeo is not animal care or management, nor is it husbandry—it is an entertainment performance, and there are no applicable exceptions for entertainment events.
Even if it were arguable that rodeo could somehow be considered animal care, management, or husbandry, distress caused by rodeo events would only be exempt from the law if it were caused in accordance with “generally accepted practices” that are also “reasonable”. Most of the public is opposed to rodeo events, and there is also a broad consensus amongst animal protection organizations—every major animal protection organization, SPCA, and humane society in Canada is opposed to rodeo. It is therefore a jump to claim that rodeo is “generally” accepted considering widespread opposition. Allowing that rodeo may be accepted at least by some (such as participants and organizers), it is still difficult to see how existing practices at rodeos would pass the “reasonable” test given animals regularly suffer and often die in these events.
Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media
Criminal Animal Cruelty Laws
In addition to provincial legislation aimed at protecting animals, the federal Criminal Code prohibits causing unnecessary pain, suffering and injury to an animal. Yet pain, suffering, injury, and sometimes even death in rodeo is inevitable and an inherent part of the event, as Stampede events of this month have shown. There are no specific exemptions to criminal animal cruelty laws for rodeo or other entertainment, and these events cannot be said to be “necessary” such that they are exempt from the law, as they are purely for entertainment and provide little social value.
Lack of Enforcement Leads to Lack of Legal Clarity
Even were it the case that some common rodeo activities were somehow exempt as “reasonable and generally accepted” activity related to animal care or somehow “necessary,” there are no blanket exceptions for any industry, and certainly not for rodeo. Stampede rodeo participants and organizers are not permitted to treat animals in any way they choose so long as it occurs on the Stampede grounds.
It is a statistical improbability that no activity that would be prohibited by even the most conservative reading of animal protection laws have occurred since the Stampede’s inception in 1923. Even so, there has been no prosecution of a Canadian rodeo organization or an involved participant since 1950. The Calgary Stampede and its participants have never been prosecuted for animal welfare violations. Indeed, even this year when an animal’s neck was twisted on live television, no charges have resulted and it does not appear that an investigation took place.
Animal protection laws across the country are often starkly underenforced. Charges are usually only laid where the animals abused are dogs and cats—those animals we know the most intimately and relate to the most. Animals used by industries often don’t benefit from the minimal protections they are afforded.
It may be that those who are tasked with enforcing the law see the Stampede as falling within exceptions allowed by law—perhaps because these events are still attended by a tiny fraction of the population.
However, tides are turning, and the majority of Canadians oppose the use of animals in rodeo according to a 2023 Research Co. poll that found 67% of Canadians and even 53% of Albertans are opposed to rodeo. Most Stampede-goers already don’t patronize the rodeo, and most Calgarians also said that they would still attend the Stampede if the rodeo events were not held.
Without authorities that are willing to bring charges forward it is incumbent on the public to fight for explicit bans of rodeo events, as has occurred in jurisdictions in Canada and abroad. Join us in getting active against rodeo events in Canada.
Banner: Jo-Anne McArthur | We Animals Media
