For Immediate Release:
March 9, 2021
Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382
New York – Syncbak’s service VUit is streaming the Iditarod—in which more than 150 dogs have died—prompting PETA supporters to set up a “graveyard” of “dead dogs” outside the company’s New York City office tomorrow to suggest that it cut ties to the race.
When: Wednesday, March 10, 12 noon
Where: Syncbak, 1032 Sixth Ave., New York
PETA persuaded ExxonMobil, a major Iditarod sponsor giving $250,000 a year, to confirm that 2021 is the last year it will support the race. The oil giant follows Chrysler, Jack Daniel’s, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, and Alaska Airlines in dropping support for the Iditarod after viewing PETA undercover video footage and learning the dogs’ death toll in the race.
“VUit should consider the deaths and misery of the dogs and cancel its plan to stream the Iditarod’s spectacle of suffering,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “No one but a psychopath wants to watch an event that has run 150 dogs to their deaths and harmed countless others and involves extreme cruelty to dogs between races.”
More than half the dogs who start the Iditarod can’t finish it, and during the 2020 race alone, more than 220 were pulled off the trail because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other issues. The leading cause of death for dogs forced to race in the Iditarod is aspiration pneumonia—caused by inhaling their own vomit. Many more have died during the off-season while chained up outside in subzero temperatures or were killed because they weren’t considered fast enough.
Sled Dogs, a documentary that shines a spotlight on the dogs who are forced to run until their bodies break down or killed if they don’t measure up, is available on Prime Video and Plex.
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 or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
