We’re going full steam ahead with our efforts to permanently ban horse-drawn carriage rides in New York, and the latest high profile New Yorker to sign on to the campaign is Lea Michele, the beautiful star of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Spring Awakening. Here’s what she said about her decision to do this ad on behalf of New York’s carriage horses:

Thank you, Lea! I’ve posted the new ad below, and you can learn more about the campaign here.

Well, about 500 or so comments later, the thread on this post about the recent Kentucky Derby horror is still going strong. It’s clear that this issue has deeply affected a lot of people—and hopefully, all this emotion about Eight Belles’ tragedy will result in some actual reforms that will give at least some degree of protection to the horses who are abused by this industry.

I don’t usually make a point of singling out certain comments on this blog, but there were enough people who made statements along the lines of “But horses are born to race. That’s what they love,” or, like, “They’re treated better than most humans,” that I figured it was worth pointing out a few more things about the horseracing industry, which, like any industry which depends on animal domination and exploitation, will try to get away with any abusive or neglectful practice that might make them an extra dime. And the real victims—Eight Belles and the thousands of less famous horses who died under similar circumstances or else were shipped off to Europe for human consumption—live miserable lives and die painful deaths.

Here are a few key points about how this works, and there’s lots more info on this horseracing factsheet:

1. Nobody “loves to run” when they’re suffering from bleeding lungs or painful leg injuries, but that doesn’t stop trainers from pumping these animals full of drugs to mask the pain, enhance their performance and just plain keep them going. We are getting calls and faxes about all kinds of cocktail mixes that "are common knowledge in the back stretch." Sometimes people are caught and suspended when they’re careless—as was the case with this veterinarian who got busted for injecting cobra venom into a horse as a nerve blocking agent. For real.
2. Why was Eight Belles so fragile? Well, horses begin training when their skeletal systems are still growing, and they’re completely unable to deal with pounding their limbs into jelly on a hard track at high speeds. Don't tell me that all those people who "really know about horses" didn't have an inkling that this filly - a filly, no less - was a high risk for serious injuries like the ones she sustained. But she was raced anyway. Any gue$$es as to why?
3. As I mentioned before, horses that don’t make the cut get shipped off to slaughterhouses. The fact that anybody who knows this would still have the gall to comment on this blog saying that these animals are “treated better than most humans” is just too depressing to even think about.

For better or for worse, Eight Belles is now a very public representative of an industry that’s rotten to its rotten core. My only hope is that people will keep looking deeper into the way these horses are treated. And don’t dare try and tell me that they like it.

I’m actually going to leave this in the capable hands of the good folks at Deadspin. Best title for an article ever. Check it out.

In a somewhat unorthodox move, Eight Belles' owners evidently had her cremated almost immediately after her necropsy on Saturday. With this news coming right on top of a report in Sports Illustrated that the jockey riding Colonel John heard Eight Belles whinnying as they passed during the race, we want to ensure that there’s some real transparency about the investigation into this incident. Today, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk sent a second appeal to Commonwealth's Attorney R. David Stengel in Louisville calling for the results of her necropsy and any other tests to be made public. You can read that letter here.

Horrible as it is to watch, this video should be mandatory viewing for anyone who still believes that the egg industry treats chickens humanely. The investigation, conducted by our friends at Mercy for Animals, shows workers at one of the largest egg companies in the U.S. mercilessly abusing chickens who spend their entire lives crammed into filthy cages so small that they can barely move. If this upsets you, there are two things you can do to help. First, you can contact one of the companies that refuses to set humane standards for their suppliers even though the kind of abuse documented here is endemic to the egg industry. But the best thing you can do to help is also the easiest. If you don’t buy eggs, no one has to suffer to make them. Check out this recipe for tofu scramble to get you started.

Those wily British counterparts of mine just won’t stop pushing the envelope. I wrote last week with some pride about how their “Feeding Kids Meat Is Child Abuse” ad made the BBC’s top 10 most controversial ads list—well, according to The Guardian, they’re at it again! Apparently there have been complaints about the anti-KFC ad pictured below. Some nannies are worried (not kidding) that it “breaches the advertising code's stipulations on responsible advertising, decency and causing fear and distress.” A couple of points here: 1) I’ll admit that the prospect of KFC slicing up defenseless animals is both frightening and distressing, but surely that’s KFC’s fault, no? 2) As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk told the journalist who wrote the Guardian piece about this ad: "The cartoon image of Colonel Sanders killing a chicken on our leaflet is obviously a caricature - a comic. We cannot imagine that our leaflet would provoke fear in anyone unless the reader was a chicken." ‘Nuff said.

Following the shocking death of the horse that Senator Hillary Clinton publicly bet on in the Kentucky Derby, PETA has asked her to denounce this dirty “sport.”

In a letter to the Senator today, PETA’s president pointed out that Eight Belles was fiercely whipped in the final stretch just before the bone in her ankles broke through her skin and she crashed to the ground. Given that the joints of the young horses used in these races are not yet fully formed, this kind of accident is inevitable, and the expressions of surprise about this incident from within the horseracing industry are utterly fake. In her letter to the Senator—which points out that Eight Belles is just one out of a long list of horses who have broken their legs and had to be killed throughout the history of the Triple Crown and the hundreds more who die every year in the horseracing industry—PETA’s president writes:

The letter asks Clinton to withdraw her public support of horseracing, and condemn the cruel “sport” instead.

I should point out here that PETA is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to stopping the exploitation and abuse of animals. PETA's condemnation of Hillary Clinton for betting on horses and its request that she denounce horseracing are in no way intended as intervention in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for political office.

Here’s the letter:

For years now, the horse racing industry has systematically ignored efforts by the animal protection community and its own disgusted insiders, including some veterinarians who aren’t afraid where their bread is “buttered,” to make life more tolerable for the horses it profits from. Given this weekend’s horror at the Kentucky Derby, we’re hoping that the members of the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority and others within the industry will now be forced to take these issues seriously. If they don’t care about the suffering of these animals, perhaps their PR people will give them a reason to care.

This morning, PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk sent a letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority proposing changes in the rules that would result in a drastic reduction of the types of injuries that claimed the life of Eight Belles in the running of the Kentucky Derby. The maudlin expressions of regret and sadness over the Eight Belles incident that we’re hearing from people within the industry are ringing pretty hollow right now. If they genuinely want to do something to try and prevent incidents like this in the future, they can start with the following:

• Suspend the jockey and bar the trainer from racing other horses
• Thoroughbreds under the age of three should not be permitted to race
• Synthetic surfaces or grass turf—which result in dramatically fewer injuries—should be mandated at all racecourses
• The number of races that horses run in a season should be limited
• Whipping should be banned

You can read PETA’s letter here. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: And we’ve got pics! Lemme know which design you like best for the suggested memorial.

After 122 years in business, the world's largest stockyard closed down last month, holding their very last livestock auction in front of a nostalgic crowd on April 11. After we had finished celebrating here in the office, we decided that, much as one might like to forget them, the actions of South St. Paul Stockyards—where around 300 million cows have been poked, prodded, kicked, and dragged to their deaths in the last century—need to be commemorated. Today, we sent a letter to Greg Miller—president of Interstate Partners, the company that plans to redevelop the stockyard property—urging him to erect a memorial to the animals who passed through the stockyard's gates. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk puts it:

You can read PETA’s letter to Greg Miller here. I’ll let you know if we get a response.

With the shock of Barbaro's death after the 2006 Preakness still fresh in their minds, the Kentucky Derby crowd saw for themselves the sordid truth about what racing means for the horses involved last night, as the filly Eight Belles was killed after collapsing on the track.

This young filly's death may have been humane, but the race sure wasn't. PETA is calling for the immediate suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez—who whipped Eight Belles mercilessly as she came down the final stretch, no doubt in agony from two front legs that were about to snap.

While the trainers, jockeys, and owners may weep their crocodile tears today over Eight Belles' euthanasia, they will be back on the track tomorrow, putting other horses at risk. Thoroughbreds are raced on hard dirt surfaces—like the one at Churchill Downs. Their bones simply can't take it, as Eight Belles' two broken front legs showed last night. Despite the wealth associated with thoroughbred racing, for the horses—most of whom end up broken, cast off, or sent to Europe to be killed for the dinner table—it's a dirty business and no better than dogfighting.