HOULTON, Maine — A Mapleton woman is hoping that an incident in which a piglet died after it allegedly was left in a hot car during the Houlton Agricultural Fair will draw more attention to an online petition she started in an effort to remove pig scrambles and sheep riding competitions from annual fair events.
Kim Lauritsen is the owner of Moon Dance Studios in Presque Isle. She said on Monday that she found both pig scrambles, in which children try to catch piglets running loose in a pen, and sheep riding competitions, in which children try to ride on the back of a sheep as long as possible in order to win a prize, “totally unnecessary and inhumane in an agricultural community.”
Lauritsen said she actually started her online petition effort on Change.org a year ago prior to the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle and asked members of the fair board to stop the competitions at their fair.
“I told them I would sponsor an obstacle course instead of these competitions, but they explained that they followed the guidelines for hosting the competitions and were going to hold them,” she said. “I just feel that kids are born with natural empathy, and we need to nurture that. We don’t need to teach them that it is OK to chase around a pig and then put it in a bag and listen to it squeal.”
She said she began circulating the petition again on Facebook earlier this month after an incident at the Houlton Agricultural Fair. On July 1, a woman allegedly acquired three piglets after the pig scramble at the fair that evening and put them in her car in a burlap bag with “no ventilation,” according to Houlton Police Chief Joe McKenna. The doors were locked and there was no water inside for the animals on the 83 degree day, McKenna said.
By the time police got to them, one piglet was dead and two were injured, the chief said. He said this week that the town’s animal control officer and representatives of Maine Animal Welfare are still investigating the piglet case and that no charges have been filed.
“They are still interviewing witnesses and trying to locate the animals that are still alive to inspect them,” McKenna said.
Lauritsen said she knows that “some people have been like, ‘Oh, get over it, it is a pig,’ but we need to be teaching children respect for all living things. To me, that means teaching them that you don’t chase after pigs and grab them and leave them to die in hot cars.”
She had gathered 3,287 signatures as of Monday afternoon. Once she reaches 5,000 signatures, Lauritsen plans to present the petition to officials with the Northern Maine Fair Association. She said she hopes that the petition will spur further action within the agricultural fair community statewide.
“I hope to use the more than three thousand signatures to spur people to weigh in on this issue,” she said.
Lynwood Winslow, a member of the board of trustees of the Northern Maine Fair Association, said this week that he did not wish to comment on the Houlton incident or on Lauritsen’s attempts to end pig scrambles or sheep riding at the fair. He said that the fair abides by all the rules for such contests mandated by the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry and said such competitions would continue at this year’s fair, scheduled for July 29-Aug. 6.
“We actually stopped giving out pigs to the winners of the scrambles about six or seven years ago,” said Winslow. “We give the kids trophies instead. It was just a sign of the times. We have fewer kids in the 4H Club now, so there are fewer kids who want to raise pigs.”
The Department of Agriculture lists a variety of regulations governing pig scrambles on its website. They include that the pigs must not weigh less than 16 pounds for the 8- to 10-year-old children competing, and not less than 22 pounds for the 10-12 age group. Contestants cannot be over 12 years of age and the event cannot last more than 10 minutes. Also, the bags used to catch the pigs must be made of burlap in order to allow the animals enough air.
Officials from the Houlton Agricultural Fair declined requests to comment for this article.
An estimated 75 percent of the 26 agricultural fairs around the state still hold pig scrambles, according to Frederick Lunt, executive director of the Maine Association of Agricultural Fairs. He said fewer fairs had sheep riding competitions.
“The rules for the pig scrambles are set up by the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, as far as the age of the child versus the weight of the pig and the size of the ring,” Lunt said on Monday. “They are then given to every fair in the state that applies for a permit to have a pig scramble.”
He said he has not heard any complaints thus far this year about the events, but there were scattered complaints “last year or the year before” from an Animal Welfare League.
Lunt said he had heard about the July 1 incident at the fair in Houlton.
“As far as that goes, you can’t legislate stupidity,” he said. “I can’t think of another way to say it. You can’t leave an animal in a hot car. If you’d have left a dog or a baby in a hot car on an 80 degree day like that it would have died.”
