Vegetarians Seek Reins on Rodeo at Conejo Days

Maybe they’ll change the world, or maybe they’ll just have some curried tofu over rice.

The California Vegetarian Assn., a group that sprouted in Thousand Oaks late last year, has launched a campaign to eliminate rodeo from the Conejo Valley Days celebration.

And members have a tentative agenda of other, equally quixotic causes.

But, if none of it works out, well, that’s OK too.

“People want to meet and discuss topics and eat more than they want to protest,” said Ralph Vaughn of Thousand Oaks, one of the group’s most crusade-minded members.

‘Create an Awareness’

“We’re not trying to make enemies or make a protest,” said Alan Grove, the association’s president. “We’re trying to create an awareness.”

Members said they were brought together by a common belief that eating meat is bad for people and worse for the animals that are eaten.

In three months, said Grove, the club has grown from a half dozen dues-paying members to about 40. Recruits come to meetings--held in a Thousand Oaks vegetarian restaurant--from as far as the San Fernando Valley and Malibu.

The club’s activities have included trips to other restaurants, a visit to the Hollywood home of health-food advocate Gypsy Boots and such mundane business as trading recipes.

Protests Rodeo

But it is social activism that has some members fired up.

Last month a contingent of association members appeared before the board of civic leaders planning the Conejo Valley Days fair, set for April 27 to May 1. Officials say the 27-year-old event is the largest privately organized fair in California, and a two-day rodeo ranks among its major attractions. The vegetarian group contends that the rodeo is cruel to animals and should be dropped.

“There’s a lot of razzle-dazzle, and what we want is to get past that and have people see what a barbaric, brutal thing it is,” said Maurine Gordon of Westlake Village, a retired singer-actress.

Gordon said that rodeo events such as calf roping are cruel to animals.

“To get the calves to come running out, in the chutes, they’ll torment and hit them with fists and boots and electrical prods,” she said. “The calf is going 25 miles an hour or faster when it’s roped and pulled to the ground. No calf escapes without injury.

Activities Defended

“It’s a terrible thing for children to see because they’re learning it’s good and fun to brutalize animals.”

Cotton Rosser, whose Marysville firm, Flying U Rodeo Co., stages the Conejo Valley Days rodeo, said members of the vegetarian group are misinformed.

“They’re trying to do the right thing, but they’re not knowledgeable about livestock,” he said. “Rodeo livestock are the fattest, slickest animals there are.

“We just buried our bucking horse, High Tide, by our swimming pool. He was 34 years old and you never saw a happier horse.”

Rosser insisted that his rodeo hands use no electrical prods and that his calves are rarely injured. He said a calf breaks a leg occasionally but readily recovers after being outfitted with an aluminum crutch.

“Those calves are worth $350 to $400 each so I take care of them,” Rosser said. “The rodeo is better for them than going to a feed lot and being fattened up to eat.”

As it happens, however, a rodeo career offers calves only a reprieve from the meat packer. They are sent to feed lots after outgrowing a 350-pound weight limit on roping animals.

Steve Rubenstein, chief executive officer of the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce, which organizes Conejo Valley Days, said there is no possibility of dropping rodeo from the fair.

He said the fair’s planning board voted to “look into” suggestions made by Gordon’s group, including staffing the rodeo with volunteer veterinarians and permitting a representative of a humane society to be present.

Rubenstein added, however, that he finds little merit overall in the vegetarians’ anti-rodeo campaign.

“There’s just too much going on in this world with issues involved with people,” the chamber official said. As for vegetarianism itself, Rubenstein said, “God put me on this planet” to eat meat.

Undeterred, Gordon vowed to station herself outside the rodeo grounds, distributing flyers that detail what she contends is the cruelty of the sport.

In a separate campaign, association members plan to take part in a Great American Meat-Out march through Thousand Oaks.

They would beef up participation in the March 20 event, sponsored by the Farm Animal Reform Movement, which last year drew fewer than 10 walkers. Modeled after the Great American Smoke-Out, the event asks Americans to drop meat from their diets for a day.

Vaughn wants the fledgling vegetarian group to expand into other causes as well. He hopes to lobby churches and service clubs to drop meat dishes from their fund-raising events.

“Charities have the grossest barbecues,” Vaughn said. “I want to establish a vegetarian society to combat the ugliness of the existing society. But a lot of people think you’re a freak if you’re a vegetarian.”

Vaughn and other members credited the growth of their group to a change in American dietary habits. People are eating less red meat, and the number of vegetarians is rising, they said.

Figures from the Washington-based American Meat Institute support that belief only partly. Per capita U. S. red meat consumption in 1986 was 141 pounds--down about 15% from mid-1970s figures, but still about 5% higher than figures from the early 1960s.

Meanwhile, figures for combined consumption of red meat, poultry and fish have risen steadily over the last 25 years, from 189 pounds per capita in 1960 to 238 pounds in 1986.

So people appear to be eating more animals, not fewer, and hungry visitors to Conejo Valley Days will have the full range of hamburgers, hot dogs and barbecued chicken to choose from. Nonprofit groups generally run the fair’s food concessions.

If all goes according to plan, however, there will be something new this year--vege-burgers at the booth run by the California Vegetarian Assn.