PETA Statement re Baffert’s Drug Positive for Medina Spirit

For Immediate Release:
May 9, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the report that Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirt, trained by Bob Baffert, tested positive for the illegal drug betamethasone in a race:

The time has long passed for regulators to stop protecting Bob Baffert with minimal fines and finally kick him out of racing. Thirty verified drug violations over his career, with five in just the last year, point to a pattern of cheating that should never have been tolerated these long years. He will undoubtedly come up with yet another implausible excuse, but this time, the regulators need to get a backbone, protect the horses from systematic abuse, and ban him permanently from racing.

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.