Canadian-born actress and animal rights activist Pamela Anderson has renewed her call for an end to chuckwagon races.
Anderson has sent a letter to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his agriculture minister urging them to stop the popular rodeo event.
"After recently moving back to my beautiful native Canada, my heart sank as I read about six horses who died in this year's chuckwagon races at the Calgary Stampede. I urge you to direct the Stampede to ban these deadly races," writes Anderson.
"Please use your authority to end chuckwagon racing before more horses die."
The races are a nightly spectacle during the Stampede. Crowds watch as horse-drawn wagons accompanied by outriders thunder around a dirt track.
Anderson is an honorary director with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. About 20 of the group's members gathered in front of the Alberta legislature last week to call for an end to the sport.
More than 70 horses have died in the event since 1986.
Anderson, best known as one of the swimsuit-clad lifegaurds in "Baywatch" in the 1990s and as a model for Playboy, wrote a similar letter to another Alberta premier in 2012. She asked Alison Redford to use her influence to persuade Stampede organizers to "end these spectacles."
Anderson said in that letter that she was ashamed the races were allowed to continue even as horses died.
The Calgary Stampede has said it will thoroughly review chuckwagon safety after the fatalities this year — the deadliest in nearly a decade.
"The Stampede's commitment to the safety of animals and the conditions of their participation in our events is paramount to our values and brand integrity," said a statement at the close of the rodeo earlier this month.
The Stampede tightened safety rules for the races in recent years, but Anderson says in her latest letter that it obviously wasn't enough.
"More than a dozen horses have died since then, because these races are inherently cruel and dangerous," she writes.
"This cruelty and indifference do not represent the Canada I know and love."
The Agriculture Department said last week that it is confident the Stampede's review of the latest horse deaths will address how best to bring in measures to improve safety and animal care.
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The "domestication contract"
The "domestication contract" between horses and humans is an ancient one and irrevocably changed the course of human history. Not, perhaps for the better. Horses rapidly became pawns in the apparently unstoppable aggressions of one human group upon another, as well as aiding humans in securing food from wild sources. It wasn't long before the horses were providing slave enegy and power to humans. Throughout this long evolution the horses rarely benefited from the bargain. Only the most pampered of horses were able to live lives free of daily pain, labour, and mistreatment.
To this day, those who keep horses for racing glory, for vanity, for greed are enacting the flawed biblical injunction that man should have dominion over the beasts of the field. Many beast keepers insist their animals are stupid and place no credence on their intelligence, nor their sentience. This is purely rationalization to justify their inhumane treatment. We now know that all the multi-cellular creatures have nervous systems and forms of "intelligence" - some that far exceed human capabilities. If humans wind up on the trash heap of life as just another failed evolutionary experiment, and if they do so without exterminating all other fife forms one can expect that some other sentient creature will ascend the throne we so stupidly vacate.
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