PETA Statement: Del Mar Deaths

For Immediate Release:
November 10, 2019

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the deaths of Ghost Street and Prayer Warrior and the injury of at least one other horse, Princess Dorian, at the Del Mar racetrack today:

These latest deaths must be criminally investigated immediately. PETA has repeatedly asked that all racing be suspended until new regulations and measures to stop the carnage can be put into place. Now, on the third day of Del Mar’s racing season, two horses, Ghost Street and Prayer Warrior, are confirmed dead, and we await the fate of Princess Dorian. In 2017, PETA met with Del Mar executives to propose that they install CurveBeam CT scan equipment and conduct a study to evaluate it for screening horses for injuries that would otherwise be undetectable to veterinarians. Del Mar discussed our proposal with Dr. Rick Arthur, the equine medical director of the California Horse Racing Board, who stated that the scan equipment would be “of little value.” Our proposal was then turned down by The Jockey Club. Since then, hundreds of horses in California and thousands of others across the country have died. Racing executives have for years accepted these deaths as mere collateral damage, and they must now be held accountable.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist view of the world.