Mike Tyson Responds To “Taking On Tyson” Pigeon Racing Criticism
Written by Vegetarian Star on October 27th, 2010 in Animal Issues, Athletes-Games-Sports.
Mike Tyson‘s six episode television series that will run on Animal Planet starting March 2011, “Taking on Tyson,” has caused animal rights activists to demand the show be pulled.
Tyson, a vegan, has responded to the allegations that the sport is cruel to the birds.
“This birds are given water and food everyday. They are medicated so they don’t get sick and have plenty of space,” he said. “They aren’t mistreated.”
However, a closer examination of the sport shows conditions birds are resigned to aren’t ideal after all.
They are kept in cages when not racing, as PETA’s president Ingrid Newkirk noted, which are often small, cramped and constructed with painful wire mesh.
And giving medications to the birds is similar to using drugs in the meat industry to sustain the animal to rear it for food. Many of those illnesses would never occur if the pigeon weren’t subjected to the conditions required to race it.
Diseases such as those of the respiratory system, parasites like Coccidiosis and worms and e. coli strike birds who fall prey after being worn down from long flights in adverse weather conditions.
And the sport, like the factory-farmed meat industry, uses antibiotics on the animals, something that is becoming a growing public health concern as the overuse of the drugs creates resistant organisms that won’t respond to treatment in the future.
Should more of us be “Taking On Tyson” and asking him to take the show off the road?
Photo: PR Photos
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