Animal Protection Groups Demand Budweiser End Clydesdale Mutilations
For Immediate Release:
September 7, 2023
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
An international coalition of animal protection organizations sent a letter this morning to Anheuser-Busch (AB) InBev urging the beer maker to end the company’s horrific practice of amputating the Budweiser Clydesdales’ tailbones.
Cutting off horses’ tailbones for cosmetic reasons is banned in AB InBev’s home country of Belgium and in other European Union (EU) member nations, yet as PETA recently revealed in a damning video exposé, Budweiser severs its famous Clydesdales’ tailbones just so they’ll look a certain way when hitched to a beer wagon.
The letter was signed by Belgium’s GAIA, Denmark’s Dyrenes Alliance, Italy’s Ente Nazionale Protezione Animali, France’s Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the Paris Animaux Zoopolis, Spain’s Foundation for Advice and Action in the Defence of Animals (FAADA) and Asociación Defensa Derechos Animal, AnimaNaturalis Internacional (based in Spain and Latin America), the Ippothesis Panhellenic Equine Welfare Society, and PETA entities in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S.
Cutting off horses’ tailbones affects their balance when running and removes their first line of defense against biting and disease-spreading insects for their entire lives. A recent PETA video exposé shows the Clydesdales in near constant distress because they’re unable to brush away flies. Tailbone amputation for cosmetic reasons is condemned by leading veterinary associations in the EU and the U.S.
“These organizations represent millions of people in the U.S. who demand that AB InBev stop disfiguring Clydesdales for no medical reason but simply to sell beer,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Tail amputation is a crude and cruel 18th century mutilation that has no place in today’s world.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
