We are now re-focussing our long term efforts to expose animal act circuses. Since ARAN’s foundation, we have been coordinating our ‘Stop Circus Suffering in Ireland’ campaign, which is highly effective at educating members of the public to steer clear of any circuses using animals. Our campaign also focuses on getting into schools, and of course, legislation to outlaw animal act circuses. We’ve successfully supported local councillors in Cork and Fingal Council, to bring in motions to ban animal act circuses and are currently working behind the scenes to try and enforce this legislation.

Recently members and supporters of ARAN held a highly successful protest outside of Duffy’s circus in Galway. During the peaceful event, people held our banners and placards which encouraged huge amounts of support from passing traffic. We also distributed dozens of leaflets to people going into and out of the circus, we’re confident many will never return, once their eyes are opened to the suffering of animals inside the circus.

There is hope on the horizon, for many years Vegas and Fossett’s circus toured Ireland using animals, but today, we’re glad to say both circuses are using almost little or no animals which is great, encouraging news. ARAN’s campaign will now focus over the coming year on generating press coverage, local demonstrations, school education and grassroots outreach. We’re also confident that a future without any animals in Irish circuses will become a reality in a matter of years, but for now we’ll step up our campaign. 

Less than 48 hours after our Galway demonstration, we were in Dublin to educate the classes of Colaiste Iosagain, in Blackrock, to again speak about cruelty to animals, animal act circuses and of course the slaughter of animals for consumption. Our campaigners played ‘Meat Your Meat’ to all the students, which helped to expose inside the slaughterhouse and open the students’ eyes up to the suffering of animals—the DVD was well received by all. We provided students with leaflets and information on how to get active and speak out for animals. Click here to see life changing footage of animal abuse inside the slaughterhouse in action. All ARAN school talks are completely informal and mainstream in our approach, which we believe is the most effective way of bringing people on board for the animals’ cause. Please consider donating to ARAN to enable us to organize more peaceful protests and more classroom education.