Iditarod Trail Committee’s Defense of Systemic Dog Neglect Inexcusable, Says PETA

For Immediate Release:
April 12, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien regarding the Iditarod Trail Committee’s (ITC) refusal to investigate blatant cruelty to dogs revealed in PETA’s eyewitness video exposé of two Iditarod champions’ facilities:

The Iditarod Trail Committee is defending its own disinterest in protecting dogs who were found chained to dilapidated, open-faced boxes and denied veterinary care for serious, painful conditions—including an arthritic former champion revealed to be chained without shelter by the frozen sea and a dog with a crippling spinal injury. Instead of taking any step to investigate the cruelty carefully detailed in PETA’s exposé—which includes the mushers’ own admissions of mistreatment of dogs—or acknowledge the affidavits and formal police complaints, the ITC has chosen to cover for the mushers.

As PETA weighs our legal options for a potential defamation claim, we’re calling for the ITC’s deceptive and ineffectual CEO to resign.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment,” and we oppose speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. More information about PETA’s Iditarod exposé is available here.