The Melha Shrine Circus made a very smart, progressive, and humane decision in 2016 to remove animals from their circus, but unfortunately have decided to bring animals back this year. Ringling Bros. and many other circuses nowadays have been struggling for years, due to our society's awakening to their barbaric cruelty and our more modernized culture with many more options to animal acts. Thanks to the greater exposure of the horrific daily torture and cruelty to circus animals and our children's new views and choices in entertainment nowadays, such archaic circuses must either adapt to our society's new tastes or close their doors, as Ringling has done. Both the LA and Dallas Shrine Circuses went animal-free a few years ago. It is time to follow in their footsteps and do the right thing. The Shriners are based on compassion, right? Please show some for the animals and move forward...in this modern age there are countless options to animal torture for entertainment.

Circus animals are deprived of everything that is natural to them and forced to perform tricks that are beaten into them with bullhooks and electric prods by the trainers. In fact, the Melha Shrine Circus has animals from companies with LONG lists of Animal Welfare Act violations and accidents. Commerford Petting Zoo has MANY Animal Welfare Act (AWA) violations and accidents/injuries - see http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/pdf/CommerfordPettingZooFactsheet_2010_11_09-pdf.pdf And they rent tigers from Hawthorn Circus Inc., which has an egregious list of over 100 AWA violations - see http://www.mediapeta.com/peta/pdf/Hawthorn-Corporation-pdf.pdf So PLEASE join us in letting the Melha Shriners know that we refuse to support The Melha Shriners until they remove animals from their circus again. It is time to move on and show compassion, not cruelty! Thank you!