And another protest – this time Royal Canin dog food. PLEASE SHARE! FOUR PAWS has evidence that ROYAL CANIN has sponsored several of these gruesome spectacles (see poster below) over recent months. FOUR PAWS calls on ROYAL CANIN not only to stop sponsoring these cruel contests, but also to take on the responsibility for the future of the tortured bears. Call on Royal Canin to take responsibility and send a protest mail now
Comments
11 responses to “Royal Canin in the Ukraine – encouraging bear baiting?”
i signed this the other week
Signed, email sent. Royal Canin are a disgrace. This barbaric ‘sport’ (torture) is medieval and has no place in the 21st Century. Royal Canin should stop supporting this immediately and then provide financial assistance so that bears can move to a safe haven. They should also issue a public apology. Somehow I don’t think that will happen, disgusting company.
This company is French? Go figure. Eternal shame to them and may they all utterly rot in hell. Perhaps in another life those bear baiters will themselves be chained and mauled by dogs. Makes me so frigging mad.
Absolutely disgraceful – this company should hang its head in shame.
Shall do all I can to stop this.
It’s horrible, but I wish people would take a little time to find out more before exploding. Royal Canin’s head office in the Gard knew nothing of this; when the video was published and the news exposed by 4paws, they were as horrified as we are. They have disassociated themselves from the events, as has the subsidiary in the Netherlands, and have given the explanation that it was “a serious lack of vigilance by one Ukrainian distributor.” This one distributor offered the banners, cups for the winners, etc., but none of the main offices or distributors were aware of it. (In fact, it’s possible that even that distributor didn’t know what TYPE of competion he was agreeing to sponsor.) So let’s be glad 4paws exposed it and that it’s in the news and everything and has been stopped, rather than blaming and hating Royal Canin, a company which I think manufactures rather good catfood and dogfood, compared with many.
Yes, I’ve just checked the French press and television reports: at Royal Canin head office in the Gard they were as horrifed as we were when this was exposed; they had no idea of such a thing, nor did the subsidiaries in other countries – even the Ukranian distributor didn’t know he was sponsporing bear-baiting, having simply been asked to donate the plaques for prizes and the banners for a “dog competition.”
Thanks to 4 paws and to whoever alerted them and filmed the clips and it’s a good thing to know that bear-baiting still happens, but Royal Canin is absoluetly not to blame and now they’ve made sure it can’t happen again.
Marvellous work, Kate, in tracking all this down. We have a Royal Canin factory near us but I havent had time to go and see them – busy with Davids parachute jump – so thank you thank you for getting this information. We still need to track down who is organising these sick and vile competitions!! And then tackle the organisers and the government and advise them what very bad press it gives the country – leat alone what the bears suffer. Do we know who owns the bears, provides the bears? Is there a sanctuary for them to go to or are they killed? If you can trace, Kate, Ill willingly publicise and organise campaigns about it. Have you moved into your house yet? xx
I’ll try to find out. It’ll take a while, because of the language and cyrillic script, but I’ll see what I can do. 🙂
Well, it turned out to be really easy to find out, as Four Paws have been taking special interest in and action for them in co-operation with the Ukrainian Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. so there’s a lot on their website and here are two other reports. It’s worth reading and refelcting on the comments below the Globe and Mail article. http://tinyurl.com/ovwj7ad and http://tinyurl.com/pkyawyf
I also looked up the addresses of Ukranian embassies, as emailing or writing to them is always worthwhile.
I keep thinking about England (and Britain, presumably) not so very long ago – there were “dancing” bears who were led around the country by their traveling masters. You still see pubs and inns called “The Bear” and there’s one in Havant with the Bear Post that had the last dancing bear in England tethered to it.
I also knew people in France who had bears; they’d had their front claws and their teeth removed as cubs. They were circus bears. Apparently there were reports of a dancing bear in Spain in 2007. There are still some in Eastern Europe and in India and other coutries. http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/03/dancing-bears-stopping-the-exploitation/ Note the tourists.Bears are horribly treated, especially in the far East, in China and around. The worst, I think, are the bile farms.
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/03/dancing-bears-stopping-the-exploitation/
Thanks Kate, have now published your findings on a separate post. You will see my added comment at the end of it.
I haven’t moved to the new house and doubt I ever will, as am not well enough. It’s only seven km away by road, four as the crow flies, I can see the village from my window and from the patio, but I wish I could un-buy the house and have the money back, ‘cos it’s just a burden and a worry now. I got much iller after signing the contract, but before the final signing, and was so ill on the day of signing that I was sitting on the sidewalk, sobbing – no French notaire would have allowed it to go ahead, but I was helpless. Luckily, it is a very nice house, but I wish it weren’t mine!