Retired TV game-show host Bob Barker says Edmonton's Valley Zoo is falling behind the lead of "enlightened zoos" by keeping elephants on display.

"The great zoos...the progressive zoos, the enlightened zoos, have come to terms with the fact that an elephant cannot be healthy and happy in a zoo," Barker told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday morning.

"And what are they doing about it? They're closing their elephant exhibits."

Barker, a staunch animal rights activist who used to host "The Price is Right," pointed to several major U.S. zoos that have closed down their elephant exhibits.

"There are no elephants on exhibit in Metropolitan New York now, no elephants in the Central Park Zoo, no elephants in the Bronx Zoo -- where they had them for 100 years, they've closed them," he said.

Barker has pushed the Valley Zoo into the spotlight in recent days, by openly questioning the health of Lucy, the only elephant currently on display at the Edmonton facility.

"Up in Edmonton...they want to keep that one poor elephant there," he said. "That's torture for her."

As Barker told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday, he wants to see Lucy moved to a sanctuary where she can "live the life that nature intended."

Dean Treichel, operations supervisor for the Valley Zoo, said Barker's criticisms are based on limited information that has been made available to him.

"Bob is basing some of his information on 200 pages of health records that have been gathered through the Freedom of Information Act, boiled down to about six pages," he told Canada AM.

"So he's making assessments on her health based on a very, very abbreviated look at it."

According to the Valley Zoo website, Lucy has been in Edmonton for more than 30 years. She is currently suffering from a respiratory problem that zoo staff believe is related to a mal-positioned molar that is affecting her sinus area.

This molar, Treichel told Canada AM, "should eventually fall out and not be an issue anymore."

The Edmonton elephant has also suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for some time, though the zoo website says "the situation is being successfully managed through treatments that relieve Lucy's symptoms."

Treichel said he wasn't sure about Barker's suggestion that "enlightened" zoos had stopped showing elephants for purely altruistic reasons.

"A lot of those zoos got out of elephants, not because they were enlightened, (but) because they thought it might be better to put them into larger breeding programs," he said.

On Wednesday, Barker said he believes that children can learn about elephants such as Lucy without seeing them in person.

"Children know all about dinosaurs, don't they?" he said.

"They know all about dinosaurs. They have never seen one, but they know all about them."