HINDI HEADS TOWARD HIGH NOON IN LAS VEGAS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1997:

WOODSTOCK, Illinois––Facing up
to five months in jail for alleged contempt of
court in connection with 1996 protests that eventually
closed the Woodstock Hunt Club, Chicago
Animal Rights Coalition cofounder Steve Hindi
on November 14 won a continuance of his appeal
until December 19––and that means he’ll have
plenty of time during the second week of
December to haunt the Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association finals in Las Vegas.
“We have extensive footage of not only
PRCA rodeos, but also International Professional
Rodeo Association and independent rodeos actually
shocking animals in the chutes to make them
perform,” Hindi told ANIMAL PEOPLE.
“While we have sent a couple of these videos to
the PRCA, no one has contacted us to let us
know what, if anything, will be done about these
clear violations of the PRCA code of ethics,”
which explicitly forbids using electroshock to
provoke bucking.

Accordingly, Hindi promised, copies
of the documentation would be furnished to both
local and national media, in hopes reporters
would ask the same questions.
But PRCA animal welfare coordinator
Cindy Schonholtz hasn’t answered those questions
yet for ANIMAL PEOPLE, either. We
began asking on October 6. Nor has Schonholtz
or anyone else told ANIMAL PEOPLE w h y
after Hindi and the TV magazine show H a r d
C o p y exposed extensive electroshocking back in
September, rodeos all over the U.S. abruptly
barred not the shocking, which was already a
rules violation, but rather banned videotaping.
Instead, Schonholtz on November 7
wrote to Vermont veterinarian Peggy Larson,
demanding in the format of an apparent threat to
sue that Larson substantiate the allegations of
rodeo abuse she issued as a Hard Copy source.
If Schonholtz had checked the A N IMAL
PEOPLE web site for background on
Larson, she’d have learned that Larson is not
only an ex-rodeo vet but also a former rodeo performer––and
an attorney, too, who was once a
USDA meat inspector. When meat packers and
USDA superiors ousted her for purportedly being
too tough, she made mincemeat of them with a
whistleblower lawsuit. Somes of the Vermont
veterinary establishment then tried to keep her
from setting up a nonprofit mobile neutering clinic.
They too learned that the way to argue with
Dr. Larson is politely.
WISE-USE WISEMAN
At the ANIMAL PEOPLE deadline ,
Hindi hadn’t heard back from IPRA president
Jack Wiseman. On November 7, Hindi informed
Wiseman that CHARC “has a report that the PRA
regional finals, held October 31-November 2 in
Gordyville, Illinois, included the shocking of
animals to make them perform,” while
“According to the rodeo program, you
(Wiseman) were present, acting as a hazer for
steer wrestlers.”
Hindi asked Wiseman to explain his
interpretation of the passage from the IPRA rulebook
that states, “Humane livestock prods shall
be used only when necessary, and only on appropriate
areas of the animal’s body.”
While CHARC investigations have thus
far focused on injuries to animals, electroshocking
bulls to make them buck may also have contributed
to the near-fatal heart injury of Jason
Morgan, 16, of Sand Creek, Michigan, who fell
off a bull and was accidentally trampled at an
August 2 high school rodeo in Clio, Michigan.
Noting a description of the incident by
Kristin Allen of the Daily Telegram in Adrian,
Michigan, and aware that Hindi was investigating
electroshocking at rodeos in the same area during
the same time frame, ANIMAL PEOPLE wrote
to Allen seeking further details, and shared the
account with Hindi, who was unable to say without
getting more information whether or not the
stock contractor whose bull stomped Morgan was
or wasn’t among those caught using electroshock.
“All I can say right now,” Hindi
responded, “is that everyone I did videotape was
doing it. We just don’t know whether that stock
contractor was one of the ones I videotaped.”
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C O R R E C T I O N : Hindi caught three
errors in the November 1997 ANIMAL PEOPLE
identifications of events shown or described
in the September 17-18 Hard Copy rodeo segments.
The stock contractor who denied knowing
the identity of a man shown electroshocking a
bull, when the man was actually the contractor’s
son, was not Cotton Rosser and the son was not
Lee Rosser; rather, the stock contractor was Roy
Hunnycutt and his son was Jerry Hunneycutt.
The Rossers did appear during the same H a r d
Copy segment. Cotton Rosser is a member of the
PRCA Hall of Fame; Hindi did videotape Lee in
the act of shocking bulls.
In addition, ANIMAL PEOPLE
misidentified a case of rough calf-roping as having
occurred at the 1995 Wauconda Rodeo in
Illinois, and confused it with an incident in which
a steer’s neck was snapped by rough roping at the
1994 Fraternal Order of Police rodeo, also in
Illinois. The roping of the steer was described on
Hard Copy, but was not shown.