PETA Statement re Baffert Horses Racing Today in California

For Immediate Release:
May 22, 2021

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the California Horse Racing Board’s refusal to suspend trainer Bob Baffert, whose horse Medina Spirit failed a drug test following the Kentucky Derby. Baffert has been temporarily barred from Churchill Downs as well as the Belmont, Aqueduct, and Saratoga tracks in New York:

The California Horse Racing Board has failed horses again by allowing trainer Bob Baffert to race his at Santa Anita today. The board put no limits on Baffert when seven horses in his barn dropped dead, when he administered thyroxine to horses who didn’t have thyroid disease, and when Justify tested positive for scopolamine. Despite more than 30 medication violations, Baffert is still putting horses on tracks, and the board’s refusal to suspend the trainer is as despicable and revealing as it is dangerous.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.