Silverstone Banner Drop: PETA Calls On Formula 1 to Stop Supporting Deadly Iditarod
Towcester, Northamptonshire – On your marks, get set … stop supporting the Iditarod! This is the message sent by PETA supporters at the Formula 1 (F1) Grand Prix at Silverstone today. Over the pedestrian bridge, outside the Silverstone racetrack, volunteers unfurled an unmissable banner that read, “F1 Bosses: Cut Ties With the Iditarod Dog Death Race”.
The action is part of an international campaign calling on F1’s parent company Liberty Media to stop sponsoring the controversial dog-sledding event through its Alaska-based subsidiary GCI. More than 150 dogs have died in the Iditarod so far, and the official death toll doesn’t include the countless others who were killed for not being fast or fit enough or who died during the off season while chained next to dilapidated shelters or plastic barrels in the bitter cold, a practice exposed in an undercover investigation by PETA US.
Photos and video from the action are available here.
“Racing drivers choose to compete at Silverstone, but in the Iditarod, dogs are forced to run for approximately 1,000 miles through ice and wind – some running to their death,” says PETA Vice President for UK, Europe, and Australia Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA is calling on everyone, from mechanics and team managers to racing drivers and their fans, to stand up for dogs and urge Liberty Media to end this shameful sponsorship.”
Every year, the Iditarod still receives more than $250,000 (approximately £198,000) from GCI, a telecommunications provider in Alaska. Many major sponsors, including ExxonMobil, Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Jack Daniel’s, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Alaska Airlines, have already cut ties with the deadly race.
During this year’s event, which had the lowest number of mushers in its history, approximately 175 dogs were pulled off the trail due to exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder to pull the mushers. The race ended in controversy after the winner was caught on video dragging exhausted dogs towards a checkpoint.
PETA entities have staged a variety of actions targeting Liberty Media, including gathering protesters in husky masks to howl outside the company’s headquarters, becoming a shareholder to exert pressure on the company from the inside during its annual meetings, and sending a “dead” dog prop to F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, urging him to call on Liberty Media to cut ties with cruel dog racing.
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, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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