Importing Spain’s running of the bulls to U.S. venues—including Pa.

A domestic version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, is slated to take place at a Berks County raceway in June.

The bulls are trained to run.

Participants are required to accept the risk of being trampled, gored, rammed or tripped.

Rob Dickens, one of the organizers of the Great Bull Run, said, “everybody understands” they could be injured.

“But that’s the draw of the event,” he said. “There’s no famous event called ‘walking down the sidewalk.'”

The animals, of course, don’t sign a waiver.

One of the rules of the event is that participants cannot mistreat the bulls.

But Nancy Botella, an agent with the Large Animal Protection Society, said she is skeptical the rule can be enforced.

“There’s going to be some people, some of these daring participants, that are going to be taunting the bulls, probably poking at them, pulling their tails, things like that,” she predicted.

The bulls used by his company won’t be scared or angered into running—they’ll be trained, Dickens said.

“How do you make a dog do anything? You can train it to do things. You can condition it to do things,” he said. “And it doesn’t have to—it doesn’t involve physical pain or anything of that nature.”

Dickens said his event has to satisfy federal and state livestock regulations, and that’s being handled by a rodeo company supplying the bulls.