Formula 1’s Ties To Deadly Dog-Sled Race Draw PETA US Stock Purchase

London – Stockholders, start your engines! PETA US has just become a shareholder in Formula 1 (F1) in order to push its owner, Liberty Media, to stop sponsoring the deadly Iditarod dog-sled race, in which more than 150 dogs have died.

Although nearly every other major sponsor – including Alaska Airlines, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniel’s, Wells Fargo, and ExxonMobil – has cut ties with the Iditarod, Liberty subsidiary GCI, an Alaskan internet service provider, is still sponsoring the notoriously cruel race to the tune of more than US$250,000 (over £205,000) every year.

“The Iditarod treats dogs like machines, pushing them beyond their limits until their bodies break down,” says PETA Vice President for UK, Europe, and Australia Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA US is gearing up for F1’s next annual meeting, where the group will make it clear that cruelty to animals is a stain on the brand’s reputation.”

Up  to half of the dogs who start the Iditarod don’t finish it. Nearly 170 dogs have already been pulled off this year’s trail due to exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder. The leading cause of death for dogs in the Iditarod is aspiration pneumonia – caused by inhaling their own vomit – and the race’s official death toll doesn’t include countless dogs who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained next to dilapidated boxes or plastic barrels in the bitter cold, a practice exposed in a PETA US undercover investigation.

PETA US also owns stock in Liberty Broadband, part of the Liberty family of companies.

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.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

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

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