MOST ALL ELEPHANTS USED IN THE CIRCUS HAVE T.B.

JUNE 12 2007

Contact:
Lisa Wathne 757-622-7382

Hugo, Okla. -- Today, PETA sent an urgent letter to Dr. Chester Gipson, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) animal care division, urging him to immediately quarantine all elephants with the Carson & Barnes Circus. PETA is urging the action after learning from a reliable source that three Carson & Barnes elephants were allegedly quarantined last week. PETA suspects that this action was taken because the elephants may have been exposed to or infected with tuberculosis (T. PETA believes that if three elephants were exposed to TB, all the elephants traveling with the circus were potentially exposed and should be quarantined and tested.

Carson & Barnes has a history of shoddy monitoring of TB, including falsifying TB tests submitted on its elephants and failing to test elephant handlers for TB. Carson & Barnes also owns an elephant named Joy who was obtained from the Hawthorn Corporation, whose elephants the USDA has described as "a very real risk of tubercular contagion to the national elephant herd and the general public."

"TB is a highly contagious disease that can spread easily from elephant to elephant and from elephants to people," says PETA Director Debbie Leahy. "Sending a group of potentially infected elephants out to mingle with thousands of circusgoers makes the Andrew Speaker case look like a tempest in a teapot."