For Immediate Release:
March 1, 2023
Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382
Anchorage, Alaska – Just ahead of the 2023 Iditarod dog-sled race, songwriting legend Diane Warren has donated her Oscar-nominated song “I’m Standing With You” to a new PETA video that juxtaposes footage of dogs chained up in the bitter cold at Iditarod mushers’ dog-sledding operations with footage of PETA supporters rallying in the dogs’ behalf. The Iditarod—in which more than 150 dogs have died—begins Saturday, and PETA plans to run the new video on Alaska TV stations over the next two weeks as the race continues.
“The images of trembling dogs chained up alone in the snow and ice and others limping from being run to the brink of collapse are hard to watch, but the protesters who show up to the Iditarod every year to speak up for these dogs give me hope that this cruel event will end,” says Warren. “I’m standing with PETA and the kind people worldwide who are demanding an end to this cruel race.”
Dogs in the Iditarod are forced to run about four marathons a day for up to two weeks through snow, ice, and wind. Aspiration pneumonia, which is caused by inhaling their own vomit, is the number one cause of death for dogs in the race. The official death toll doesn’t include countless others who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained to dilapidated boxes or plastic barrels, a practice exposed by a PETA undercover investigation.
Warren, a Grammy-, Emmy-, and Golden Globe–winning songwriter, received an Honorary Academy Award this year as well as her 14th Academy Award nomination, for “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
