PETA Statement: Report on Breeders’ Cup Death

For Immediate Release:
January 15, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the report by veterinarian Larry Bramlage on the death of Mongolian Groom, who sustained a fatal injury in a race at the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita Park in November:

Mongolian Groom was raced to his death with two stress fractures—this should never have happened. If the racing industry had listened to PETA five years ago when we urged a trial study of CurveBeam’s CT imaging equipment, Mongolian Groom would likely be alive today. The report states that CT scan equipment would be useful and then falsely claims that such equipment doesn’t exist. Our proposal was rejected by the leaders of racing, and we now urge them to put the scan in place immediately. Furthermore, we aren’t convinced that medications played no role in Mongolian Groom’s death, and we await the California Horse Racing Board’s report.

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 worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.