Photos: Animal Defenders Crash Formula 1 Race With ‘Bloody’ Dog ‘Funeral’ Over Animal Abuse Ties

Photos: Animal Defenders Crash Formula 1 Race With ‘Bloody’ Dog ‘Funeral’ Over Animal Abuse Ties

Barcelona – On Sunday, “grave stones” with “bloodied” dog collars were placed outside the Formula 1 (F1) Spanish Grand Prix while supporters of PETA and Spanish animal rights party PACMA held signs proclaiming, “150 Dogs Have Died in the Iditarod”. The demonstration is the latest in PETA’s push for F1’s owner, Liberty Media, to stop sponsoring – through the company’s Alaska-based subsidiary GCI – the controversial dog-sled race that has killed over 150 dogs since its inception, most commonly from aspiration pneumonia (caused by inhaling their own vomit).

Photos from the demonstration are available here.

“No reputable company would prop up an event that forces dogs to cross more than 1,600 kilometres of ice and wind, running many to their deaths,” says PETA Vice President Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA is urging Formula 1 to steer clear of this death race, as Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, and other former sponsors have already done.”

Nearly 250 dogs were pulled from the trail this year due to exhaustion, illness, or injury, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder to pull the mushers. The Iditarod’s official death toll doesn’t include countless others who were killed because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained to dilapidated boxes or plastic barrels in the bitter cold, a practice exposed by an undercover PETA US investigation.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA’s website or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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