PO Box 17523, Tampa, FL 33682 FVAonline@yahoo.com 727-656-8368
Click on
Calendar of Events to see all of our upcoming activities on our Meetup site!
Featured Event: 
FVA will be a vendor at the Florida State Fair
February 9 - 20
Lots of volunteers are needed to cover 12 days of shifts
This February FVA will have volunteer opportunities at the Florida State
Fair. We will be tabling for 2 weeks. Feb. 9 through Feb. 20. 12 days/9 am to
10 pm.
This an amazing opportunity for us to reach out to people that we normally
would not be able to and inform them about the tragedy of industrial animal
factories. It will be great outreach to show people the health benefits of a plant based
diet and how a more humane diet will reduce an immense amount of animal
suffering.
FVA will be inside the Expo Hall. The shifts will vary and we need LOTS OF
VOLUNTEERS to help cover the 12 days we will be there. First time volunteers
will be partnered with more experienced ones.
November 2011:
USDA fines Ringling Brothers a record $270k for animal welfare violations read more here
Wild Animals Belong in the Wild, Not in
Circuses
Would you willingly support extreme cruelty and
violence to animals? Of course not. But that's what you are doing if you buy a
ticket to a circus that includes exotic animal acts. The public perception of
circuses is of entertaining spectacles. But behind the spectacle at the circus
lies a grim reality. The wild animals used in circus shows--elephants, tigers,
lions, monkeys, bears, and others--are subjected to extreme horrors, including
the following:
Circus animals are often brought into the business
via a brutal trade in critically endangered species. Often, a given circus
animal is the only one who survived when many others were injured or killed in
the process of attempts to capture them in the wild. This trade in exotic
animals helps to bring them closer and closer to total extinction. If these
animals were human, we would call what happens to them
kidnapping.
Circus animals are deprived of their natural
environments and of opportunities to engage in natural behaviors. Just like you,
wild animals like to feel the earth beneath their feet, the wind and sun on
their faces. They like to interact socially with others of their species, to
engage in normal mating behavior, to rear their babies, to roam freely. In
captivity, they are subjected, instead, throughout their lives, when they are
not performing, to confinement in small cages, compounds, and transport trucks.
Imagine spending most of your life confined to a truck, being transported from
one show to another. Imagine never being able to engage in your natural
behaviors, like socializing with others of your kind. Circus animals don't like
it any more than you would. There's a word for what they experience:
enslavement.
Animals don't just spontaneously learn to perform
the tricks that you see at the circus. To get animals to perform unnatural
acts such as riding bicycles, standing on their heads, and jumping through
rings of fire, trainers subject them to savage beatings; to restraints such as
ropes, chains, and manacles; to deprivation of ordinary comforts, food, and
water; to wounds from bull hooks; to electric shock. There's a word for these
experiences, too: torture.
Kidnapping. Enslavement. Torture. The
results of such treatment are predictable. Exotic animals in circuses live
short, miserable lives. Often, they are driven insane by their
confinement and treatment. You would be, too, if you had to live as they
do.
The exotic animals used by circuses are among the
most intelligent of species. Elephants, for example, are renowned for their
superb parenting and their close bonds of family and friendship. They converse
continually with one another in frequencies too low for human hearing. They are
self aware. They are compassionate to one another. They are known, like humans,
to mourn their dead. Subjecting cognitively sophisticated creatures to
confinement and social deprivation is unconscionable, and so is subjecting ANY
creature to a lifetime of suffering. And that's why people of conscience
refuse to buy the tickets sold by circuses and other organizations that use
animals in shows.
Don't be a part of this problem. Be part of the
solution. Don't buy tickets for the theater of cruelty and violence that
is the circus. Instead, support circuses that have agreed not to use animals for
“entertainment.”
Alternative ideas for family outings with the kids
in the Tampa Bay area: Glazer Children's Museum, Big Cat Rescue (This is not a
zoo; it is a sanctuary), MOSI, paint your own pottery studios.
For more information on animals in circuses, visit
www.circuses.com
How to be part of the solution:
Read the following article by Dr. Marc Bekoff, one
of the leading researchers on nonhuman animal intelligence, about legislation
under consideration to ban the use of exotic animals in circuses in the United
States. Then, write your Senator or Congressperson to say that you support H.R.
3359, the Exotic Animal Protection Act.
Donate to Florida Voices for Animals to help us in
this fight to keep wild animals in the wild. To make a donation, go here.
Article in Psychology Today:
Circuses: Wild Animals Do Not Belong in the Cruelest Show on Earth
By Dr. Marc Bekoff 
Dr. Marc Bekoff & Bessie, a rescued
dairy cow, at Farm Sanctuary in
Orland, California
Every now and again I learn of a formal
move to make the lives of animals better, and none could be more needed and
timely than a new pending bill that is geared to ban wild animals in traveling
circuses. HR 3359 has been
introduced to do just that (see also). Circuses are indeed among the cruelest shows on
Earth but the public is not
privy to what goes on behind the scenes. Countless sentient animals suffer in
silence and the heartless abuse goes on and on because the cries of the animals
go unheard. Animals are "broken" to the point that they become totally
submissive because they can't stand the pain. A detailed article about the deep
and enduring suffering of circus animals in Mother
Jones is a very
informative read but it will likely make you teary, as it did me. Other images
of abuse can be found here and here and here. <Continue reading this
story. . . .>