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Bob Barker slams Calgary Stampede: ‘Close it down’

"The Price Is Right" game show host Bob Barker is adamant that the rodeo is wrong.

Five months after slamming his show for giving out a prize trip to the Calgary Stampede, the 88-year-old animal activist has once again taken aim at the annual Alberta event, suggesting that organizers shut it down to celebrate its 100th anniversary.

"I would like very much to see them celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede by saying that is enough animal cruelty," Barker told the Canadian Press. "Let's wind it up and close it down."

Boasting rodeo events and chuck races as well as rides, the stampede gets back in the saddle again this Friday after adopting new rules last year to protect animals.

But Barker said he doubts the organizers have "made any great strides in making rodeo safe." He said, "Every national animal protection organization is absolutely opposed to rodeo, and the Calgary Stampede is considered one of the most despicable of all rodeos in the world."

In February, the octogenarian hit out at the stampede when "The Price Is Right" offered a free trip to the 2012 event as a prize to its winning contestant.

"If I had been there, it would never in the world have happened," Barker told CBC at the time. "This Calgary Stampede is just an egregious example of inhumane treatment for animals. To give that prize away, I think, is utterly disgusting."

According to the host, the Calgary Stampede is "notorious for horses falling to their deaths." The Vancouver Humane Society backed Barker up, telling CP that more than 50 chuck wagon horses have died since 1986.

A tireless campaigner for animal rights, Barker just last month donated approximately $200,000 to Mindy's Memory Primate Sanctuary in Oklahoma, which will use the money to house five retired research monkeys from California.

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