Photos: Millennium Hotel Faces PETA Protest Over Iditarod Ties

Photos: Millennium Hotel Faces PETA Protest Over Iditarod Ties

London – Today, because still sponsors the Iditarod – in which more than 150 dogs have died – PETA protesters descended on the hotel group’s Knightsbridge location. Activists held signs that read, “Iditarod Dogs: Chained, Sick, and Dying,” “Millhellium: Check Out of Iditarod Cruelty,” and “Millennium Sponsors Iditarod Cruelty.”

Up to half the dogs who start the Iditarod don’t finish it, and during this year’s race, nearly 200 dogs were pulled off the trail because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder. The leading cause of death for dogs forced to race in the Iditarod is aspiration pneumonia – caused by inhaling their own vomit. Many others have died during the off-season while  or were killed because they weren’t considered fast enough.

“PETA is calling on Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc to check out of the Iditarod’s cruelty to dogs,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “Millennium guests should be disgusted by the thought of supporting a race that has run 150 dogs to their deaths and countless others to the brink of collapse.”

ExxonMobil, a major Iditarod sponsor, which paid the race $250,000 (approximately £176,000) a year, confirmed that 2021 was the last year that it would support it, and Chrysler, Jack Daniel’s, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Alaska Airlines have all ended their support of the Iditarod.

PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, notes that hundreds of dogs are pulled out of the Iditarod every year because they’re too injured or ill to go on – and countless others die immediately after the race, during training, or while chained to plastic barrels outdoors during the off-season.

High-resolution images of the protest are available here. For more information about the use of animals for human entertainment, please visit PETA.org.uk.

Contact:

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

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