PETA UK Guide to Compassionate Living Issue 2

Tips for an Animal-Friendly Holiday Travelling this summer? Fantastic! Everybody needs a holiday. But don’t add cruelty to your itinerary by visiting marine parks, roadside zoos, captive-dolphin shows, or beaches that offer donkey rides. Animals in these dismal destinations never get a holiday. Day in and day out, they’re confined to tiny cages or pools or tethered in a barren spot without shelter from the elements. They live an unfulfilled life that is light years away from what nature intended, and they’re forced to dance around in tutus in the circus or give rides all day long in the heat – or worse. Europe offers so many great opportunities for tourists that your trip can be crammed full of cruelty-free memories. You should walk the other way whenever any attraction includes captive animals. Here are four of the worst: Cruelty-Free Travel Every year, tourists travel to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls, during which bulls are forced to run through the slippery, narrow city streets to the bullring. After the run, the bulls are fought in the arena. Petroleum jelly is often rubbed into their eyes, and heavy sandbags are dropped on their backs to weaken and disorientate them before they’re sent out into the bullring, where they’re then taunted, stabbed repeatedly, and finally killed by the matador in a stadium full of screaming onlookers. The majority of Spaniards reject bullfighting – please don’t support this archaic spectacle. Running of the Bulls (Pamplona, Spain)

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Donkey Rides (throughout Europe)

The beach is great for humans – we can sunbathe or go for a dip when we get too hot. But it’s pure hell for the donkeys who are forced to cart children around on the hot sand. Some donkey-ride operators at beach resorts in Europe even keep the animals chained together at all times. Instead of going for a donkey ride, swim in the sea or build a sandcastle.