Viral ‘T-Rex’ Race Prompts Running of the Bulls Overhaul Ask

For Immediate Release:

12 July 2019

Contact:

Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

VIRAL ‘T. REX’ RACE PROMPTS RUNNING OF THE BULLS OVERHAUL ASK

PETA Offers to Pay for Dinosaur Costumes if Pamplona Mayor Agrees to Replace Archaic Blood Sport With Cruelty-Free T. Rex Fest

Pamplona – With 30 bulls dead and at least 22 humans gored or seriously injured so far at this year’s Running of the Bulls, the San Fermín festival continues to be a vestige of a far less enlightened time when people didn’t understand that animals can feel pain and fear and thought nothing of putting fellow humans in harm’s way.

So, after a humorous video of a group of humans in Tyrannosaurus rex costumes racing around a track went viral, PETA sprang into action and sent a letter to the mayor of Pamplona suggesting that the city replace the dangerous, archaic, and horrendously cruel Running of the Bulls with its own version of a T. rex race. To help ease the switch, the group even offered to cover the cost of the dinosaur costumes for all the race participants.

“If Pamplona wants to carry on hosting an event reminiscent of the Stone Age, a T. rex race is just the ticket!” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “PETA is proposing a fun, family-friendly alternative to the Running of the Bulls that leaves bulls in peace, harms no one, and has already proved wildly popular.”

More than 125 Spanish towns and cities have declared themselves anti-bullfighting. But in Pamplona, terrified bulls are forced to run along narrow streets on their way to a violent death in the bullring, often slipping and sliding along the way. Once there, men taunt, exhaust, and stab each bull with a lance and several harpoon-like banderillas until he becomes weakened from blood loss. Then, the matador stabs the exhausted animal with a sword, and if he doesn’t die straight away, other weapons are used to cut his spinal cord. Many bulls are paralysed but still conscious as their ears or tail are cut off to be given to the matador as trophies.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. The group’s letter to the mayor is available here. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk.

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