Alaska Airlines Ends Decades-Long Iditarod Sponsorship After PETA Push
Dog-Shaped Vegan Chocolates Sent to Airline in Thanks for Kind Move
For Immediate Release:
March 2, 2020
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
After hearing from nearly 100,000 PETA supporters, meeting with the group’s representatives, and facing PETA protests outside its corporate headquarters, Alaska Airlines—the fifth-largest airline in the U.S.—has confirmed that its more than 40 years of support for the Iditarod will end after the 2020 race. In thanks, PETA is sending the company a box of delicious dog-shaped vegan chocolates.
“When dogs used in the Iditarod aren’t being forced to run until their paws bleed and their bodies break down, they’re chained alone in the bitter cold,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA and every kind person opposed to cruelty to dogs is flying high over Alaska Airlines’ decision to stop sponsoring the Iditarod.”
Dogs used in the Iditarod are forced to run about 1,000 miles through biting winds, blinding snowstorms, and subzero temperatures. More than half of those who start the race don’t finish because they’re too ill, injured, or exhausted to go on—and more than 150 dogs have died as a result of the race, not including countless others who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained up. A first-of-its-kind PETA undercover investigation of two former Iditarod champion mushers’ kennels revealed that dogs were denied veterinary care for painful injuries, kept constantly chained next to dilapidated boxes and plastic barrels in the bitter cold and biting wind, and forced to run even when they were exhausted and dehydrated.
Alaska Airlines joins a long list of companies—including Coca-Cola, Costco, Jack Daniel’s, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Panasonic, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, State Farm, and Wells Fargo—that have stopped supporting the Iditarod, and PETA is calling on Chrysler to follow suit.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
