Adore-A-Bull: NJ Train Station’s Famed Steer Isn’t Food, Rescuer Urges

NEWARK, NJ — Want to help Ricardo the Bull find the happiness he deserves? It’s simple, his rescuer says: Stop thinking of him as “food.”

Last week, the now-famous steer – whom some people have said actually may be a Texas longhorn – made national news headlines when he wandered onto the train tracks at Newark Penn Station in New Jersey.

Ricardo’s foray into big city living temporarily shut down train service at the busy station, astounding shocked commuters as he galivanted down the tracks on Dec. 14. Read More: Bull Wanders Onto Tracks In Newark, Delays NJ Transit Trains (UPDATE)

It’s still unclear how the steer steered himself onto the tracks in the first place (or where he came from). Officials said he escaped somewhere near Newark Airport, and began making his way back there after his sojourn to the train station.

It wasn’t long before the Newark Police Emergency Services Unit and officers with the Port Authority of NY/NJ Police Department were able to impound the animal in a fenced lot behind a building near Frelinghuysen Avenue and Victoria Street. No injured were reported, authorities said.

Ricardo’s strange journey was just getting started, however.

Some reports have since speculated that the animal escaped from a local slaughterhouse. A livestock and poultry market is located a short distance away from where Ricardo was recaptured.

A similar case didn’t end up well when a bull escaped from a Queens slaughterhouse in 2017. After the animal broke loose near a train station and ran down several busy city streets, emergency responders eventually managed to apprehend it and transport it to a city shelter – although it was pronounced dead when it arrived.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the case for Ricardo.

After rounding up the wayward steer, authorities placed a call to the Skylands Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit Wantage-based rescue organization that has taken in other bovines in need over the years. Dubbing the newfound steer “Ricardo,” the sanctuary gave him a new home – and a pathway to a better future.

Ricardo joins another rescued bovine at the sanctuary, Stewie, who bolted from a slaughterhouse in Brooklyn earlier this year.

Mike Stura of Skylands Animal Sanctuary has been providing updates on social media about the steer’s progress after his voyage from Essex to Sussex County.

“Safe, but heavily sedated,” the sanctuary reported the afternoon after receiving Ricardo. “I hope he’s alright. He is moving around, but has not gotten up yet.”

Stura shared another update with a video the following day, adding that there was a deeper message behind the unusual incident:

“Ricardo waking up from tranquilizer. He has had a long, rough day of fighting for his life, luckily it has paid off. He has already been seen by our veterinarian and hopefully he will stand up soon. Just look at how handsome he is. Can you imagine that people wanted to kill and eat him? Unreal. Do the right thing, go vegan.”

“Ricardo is up, walking, eating and drinking,” the sanctuary reported just before the weekend, sharing another video of the recuperating bovine. “We couldn’t be happier … a new house for him tomorrow.”

Stura provided another update on Saturday. According to Stura, the beloved bovine was put into isolation until he gets an OK from the vet, but is doing “very well,” some scuffs and minor abrasions aside. Now, it’s time to start thinking about what Ricardo was doing in Newark in the first place, he insisted.

“Everybody was rooting for him when they saw him running down the tracks, as we often do,” Stura said in his latest video. “I’ve literally gotten thousands of phone calls and emails and texts from people saying they want to help him, do this … and that’s fantastic. But I’m gonna tell you something: he is no different from the millions and millions of other animals that go to slaughter every year in this country.”

Do you really want to do something to help Ricardo and his kin? It’s easy: change your shopping and eating habits – and the way you look at these animals, Stura says.

“Every one of them is as much an individual as he is,” urged Stura, who said he hasn’t had a “piece of dead animal” in his mouth since 1995.

“We don’t have to eat animals, we don’t have to use things from them … it's 2023, we don’t need it,” he said.

Ironically – just a few days before Ricardo made his appearance at Newark Penn Station – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) put up a series of digital messages at the busy train station featuring chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs and other animals, making pleas to view animals as fellow beings, not as food.

“I’m ME, not MEAT,” the digital ads proclaim. “See the individual. Go vegan.”

• See Related: Vegans In Newark: PETA At Penn Station, Celebrity Chef Visits School

Meanwhile, other New Jersey animal rights advocates are taking action on a federal level – including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, one of the state’s most recognizable vegans.

Booker, a Newark resident, has been among the lawmakers calling for mass reforms to a “broken” and often cruel U.S. food system, including so-called “factory farms.” Earlier this year, he reintroduced a package of proposed laws that shoot for sweeping reforms in the nation’s agriculture sector.

• See Related: The U.S. Food Industry Is Giving Cory Booker An Upset Stomach
• See Related: Sen. Cory Booker Continues His Beef With The Beef Industry

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