Thursday, 4:30 PM
Pipe fitter, senator push to regulate treatment of circus elephants
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
State Senator Robert L. Hedlund insists that he is not a crusader. Nor, the Weymouth Republican hastens to add, is he a "vegetarian or anything."
"It's just the further I got into this thing, the more appalled I became," Hedlund said today in a telephone interview.
Hedlund is talking about elephants. Since late 2004, he has been pushing a bill on Beacon Hill to toughen the training and cruelty standards for circuses that bring elephants to Massachusetts.
Tomorrow morning at the State House, the senator is holding an informal hearing that will include Dr. Joyce Poole, who has studied the creatures for more than 30 years in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. Hedlund described her as the "Jane Goodall of elephants."
The senator, who hasn't been to a circus since he was a boy, is trying to outlaw the bullhook, a device that looks like a fireplace poker on a long pole that he said some circus trainers use to beat elephants into submission.
Circuses disagree with that assessment. They say bullhooks, chains and other tools are humane, according to the Associated Press.
"It's analogous to putting a leash and collar on your dog, or a bit and bridle on your horse," said Tom Albert, vice president of government relations for Feld Entertainment, which owns Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, the nation's largest traveling circus.
Before Hedlund took a close look at the way he says elephants are treated in circuses, he was skeptical when a constituent first approached him with the idea for the bill, which passed the Senate last session but stalled in the House.
"Initially I felt it was going to be some type of politically correct, left leaning type of outlook," Hedlund said. "Interestingly enough, he's a union pipe fitter. A meat-eating gun owner much like myself."
That meat-eating gun owner is Bob MacKay, 44, a refrigeration pipe fitter with Local 537 who also heads the South Shore Humane Society. MacKay, of Rockland, spent time in Kenya watching elephants in the wild and said he then heard stories about how the animals are mistreated when they are brought to this country to perform.
"This is all about how the circus is an anachronism in the modern world," MacKay said.
