Demand an End to Abuse of Working Bullocks

Bullocks are widely used in India to pull heavy carts loaded with goods. These bulls are torn away from their mothers at a young age. They are castrated with no painkillers or anesthesia. Their noses are pierced with a big nail and hammer, with no anesthesia or painkillers, and then a thick rope is yanked through their sensitive noses to control them for the rest of their lives. Most of these bullocks have ripped noses due to the ropes being tied too tight, or their owners forcefully yanking them every day.

These bullocks are not given adequate food or water - the money the owners earn from them is mostly used to buy drugs, cigarettes, liquor or prostitution. They are made to pull overloaded carts every day for hundreds of miles, and are constantly whipped or hit with bamboo sticks on their bones or genitals to make them go faster. They get no shelter from the sweltering heat or the chilling cold whether they are pulling the carts or tied up. After a long hard day, they are just tied up outside in the open at night to sleep in bitter cold or pouring rain, and then they are forced to work again all day the next day. Most of them suffer from severe malnutrition, dehydration, stress, yoke gall, broken bones and knees, arthritis and lameness. You can look in their eyes and see that they have just given up on life. Their souls have been snatched from their bodies, and they are just treated like disposable insensitive objects.


Bullocks that are unable to work, or get old, are sent to slaughterhouses to make leather. They are forced to walk hundreds of miles to the slaughterhouses with no food or water, red pepper is rubbed into their eyes to make them move, and they are hit and electrocuted on their genitals. Many bullocks do not make the journey. The ones that do die a violent painful death.

What right do we have to enslave animals, abuse them all their life, and then discard them like worthless objects? Have our religious values stooped so low?

There are many resources that exist in our society to assist with breast cancer, autism, schooling for deprived kids, homeless people, dogs, cats, endangered animals. But unfortunately, there is not much focus on the working animals, like these bullocks.

We demand the governments of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh to immediately provide short term relief to these working bullocks. Among other things:
-build water troughs along the work routes
-replace the nose ropes with non-invasive halters
-provide medical care
-provide adequate meals
-educate owners on treating the bullocks humanely, on proper medical care, proper shoeing procedures, etc.

In the long run, we demand that these bullocks be retired to a sanctuary, as an overcrowded polluted city is no place for these bullocks pulling overloaded carts, especially in this age of mechanized vehicles.

In India, cows are worshipped and given the same status as a mother. Why should bullocks be treated any different?