PETA Statement: Suspension of Horse Racing Nationwide

For Immediate Release:
May 28, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo on horse-racing deaths nationwide, including 15 in New York in 2019, and the need for a suspension of racing pending new rules:

While national attention has been focused on racing deaths at Santa Anita, horses continue to die at tracks across the country. In New York alone, where the Belmont Stakes will soon be held and where PETA has 350,000 supporters, 15 Thoroughbreds have died while racing or training so far this year—and 148 died in the last two years. Yet neither New York nor any other state has enacted the rules that The Stronach Group and the California Horse Racing Board have put in place and continue to strengthen. There is no excuse for this inaction. PETA is calling for the suspension of racing nationwide until every racing jurisdiction matches or surpasses what California has done. Trainers, owners, and veterinarians have recklessly controlled racing and imperiled horses for too long, and those days must come to an end.

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.