For Immediate Release:
September 10, 2021
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Elmont, N.Y. – Days before Belmont Park reopens, a PETA supporter in a whistle costume will hand out free whistles to trackworkers—engraved with a new dedicated hotline number (706-WHISTLE) for tipsters to report horse racing cruelty, such as illegal drugging and physical abuse. The hotline launch follows reports that 69 horses died racing and training at New York tracks in 2020, including 34 at Belmont Park, and that so far in 2021, 56 horses have died in New York state. PETA has been flooded with tips over the past two years alerting the group to unethical activities in horse racing.
Where: Belmont Park, 2150 Hempstead Tpk. (near the intersection with Sterling Road), Elmont
When: Tuesday, September 14, 10 a.m.
“If anyone witnesses abuse or sees a horse drop dead, they should call us immediately,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Blowing the whistle on horse racing cruelty makes it easier for PETA to pursue justice and can also help prevent future tragedies.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
