PETA files complaint against USDA over Siegfried & Roy

Jen Lawson and Jean Reid Norman

Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2003 | 11:21 a.m.

An animal rights group has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging that animal inspectors accepted thousands of dollars worth of Siegfried & Roy tickets in exchange for letting the performers violate the Animal Welfare Act.

Jim Rogers, spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which conducts the wild animal inspections for the Agriculture Department, acknowledged that four inspectors and two administrative employees did get free show tickets and stuffed tigers while in Las Vegas in April for the USDA Big Cat Symposium.

The tickets were handed out by representatives of Feld Entertainment, which produces the Siegfried & Roy show, during a reception at the symposium, Rogers said.

Rogers said no conflict of interest exists because the inspectors in question aren't in charge of the Nevada region, and they later repaid the cost of the tickets and sent the toys back. The employees who signed off on previous Siegfried & Roy inspections were not among those who took the tickets, he said.

That doesn't satisfy Lisa Wathne, captive exotic animal specialist with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who filed the complaint.

"Any USDA inspector who sat through that show should have recognized that the way Siegfried and Roy were handling their tigers on stage was unsafe and that should have been reported to their superiors," she said.

The inspectors did tell their superiors about the free tickets, Rogers said.

"They went to the show and when they got back to the office, they said, 'Guess what we got to do?'th" Rogers said. "Then their supervisors said, 'Guess what? You get to pay it back.'th

"We didn't want to look improper, which is why everything was sent back. Can you imagine what the story would be if we hadn't sent everything back?"

Wathne said PETA's chief complaint is that Siegfried & Roy have been permitted to perform for so many years in a manner that they say violates the Animal Welfare Act, particularly the section that says animals used for public exhibition must be handled so there is minimal risk to the public, "with sufficient distance and/or barriers between the animals and public."

Whether the distance is safe is determined by inspectors, Rogers has said.

In her letter to the USDA, she said that resort developer Steve Wynn reportedly viewed the videotape of the Oct. 3 tiger mauling of Roy Horn and "noted that Montecore put his 26-inch head just four inches away from a woman in the audience."

Wynn could not be reached for comment.

Wathne said the act is open to interpretation, but added that "your average person would agree that walking full-grown tigers around on a stage not only without a barrier but taking the tigers within inches of the audience is dangerous. For the USDA not to recognize or act upon that is really outrageous."

Rogers disputed that claim.

"Everything was in compliance," he said.

Spokesmen for Siegfried & Roy have said that the audience was kept safe at all times during their shows and they held up their 13-year track record at the Mirage as evidence.