Is California on its way to banning rodeos? Behind the growing movement to buck the event

Earlier this fall, Alameda County supervisors officially banned the practice of “wild cow milking” — a timed event in which a lactating beef cow, unused to human handling, has been wrangled from the fields and brought to an arena. “It’s animal abuse,” said Eric Mills, coordinator for Oakland’s Action for Animals, an animal welfare organization. “Folks sometimes underestimate the popularity of rodeo,” said Baldwin, citing statistics showing that roughly 6.3 million people attend professional rodeos nationally each year, and that 43 million Americans identify as rodeo fans. “What I’m saying is, if animal rights activists were successful in shutting down bull riding — through this argument that there’s some kind of torture that doesn’t exist — I assure you these animals have zero purpose and they’d be turned into hamburger within a week,” Gleason said. And Mills, the animal rights activist from Oakland, said the reason California legislators drafted the state’s rodeo law was because of the large number of injuries, including a 1995 Salinas rodeo performance in which five animals died or had to be euthanized: three horses, a steer and a calf.