Kategorie: Animals

When the 2022 Iditarod kicked off Saturday, March 5, with its Ceremonial Start in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, PETA was there, leading a funeral procession with “pallbearers” carrying a dog sled piled with “bloody dogs,” ensuring that no spectator missed the fact that more than 150 dogs have died in the Iditarod to date. And now, as some media outlets attempt to convince audiences that it’s the mushers who are burdened by “VERY rough” trail conditions and who are “exhausted,” PETA’s here again, telling a very different truth—and we’ve got the receipts.

While in Alaska protesting this year’s death race, PETA and other activists snapped photos and captured video footage that illustrate what it’s actually like to be a dog forced to race in the Iditarod. Please scroll through to the end—PETA has a plan to #EndTheIditarod, but we and these dogs need your support.

Mushers Chain Dogs Up, Leave Them to Shiver in the Biting Alaskan Wind and Bone-Chilling Snow

Mushers Tug Dogs Along Like Pieces of Luggage

Mushers Heave Dogs Into Tiny Crates, as if They’re Shoving Bags of Trash Down a Chute

This heartlessness is how mushers treat dogs at the Iditarod starting line, where members of the media and spectators are free to film—imagine the abuse and neglect these animals endure when they’re on the trail, when no one’s watching.

Anyone who knows anything about dogs will understand why the Iditarod is hell for them and why it needs to end.

Dogs should be curled up on a loving guardian’s couch, not chained up in the snow and forced to run hundreds of miles through biting winds. More than 100 dogs have already been pulled from this year’s race, and during the 2021 race, nearly 200 dogs were removed from the trail because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes. This isn’t entertainment, and clearly the key to winning isn’t mushers’ athleticism—it’s dog abuse. So ask yourself: Isn’t this dog’s life more important than some prize purse?

The only acceptable answer is yes. This isn’t how “man’s best friend” should be treated—this isn’t how anyone should be treated. Dogs and other animals aren’t here for us to exploit—they’re not here for us at all. Dogs deserve better, and PETA is determined to make this year’s Iditarod the last—will you join us?

Following communications from PETA, Albertsons (the parent company of Safeway) has agreed to suspend sourcing from locally based Culver Duck Farms—the country’s second-largest duck slaughterer, which boasts that it’s the only one that’s “American Humane Certified”—in light of whistleblower photos, video footage, and an affidavit detailing that ducks’ throats were slit while they were conscious, live birds were tossed into grinders every day, and others were buried under a mountain of feed.

“Albertsons made the right choice to reexamine its relationship with this operation, where birds were smothered to death and ground up alive,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges the company to make this suspension permanent and reminds the public that the only humane meal is a vegan one.”

After a 2016 PETA undercover investigation into Culver revealed that birds were bludgeoned, decapitated, and kept in ammonia-ridden sheds, Harris Teeter dropped the slaughterer as a supplier. PETA is calling on other companies that Culver—which slaughters approximately 6.5 million ducks every year—identifies as customers, including Southeastern Grocers (the parent company of Winn-Dixie and other chains and based in Jacksonville, Florida) to follow suit.

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

Please see the following statement from Dr. Alka Chandna, Ph.D., vice president of laboratory investigations cases at PETA, regarding yet another critical violation at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) primate center:

The primate center at OHSU should just shut down and spare monkeys and taxpayers any further pain. New federal records show that two monkeys were severely injured because the cages they were imprisoned in weren’t secure. This incident can be added to the very long list of animal protection violations that have resulted in injured or dead animals, including the scalding deaths of two monkeys in 2020 when their cage was run through a high-temperature washer while they were still trapped inside and two separate incidents in which marmoset monkeys were subjected to botched brain surgeries and then developed brain infections. The primate center has been propped up for too long by funds that should be going to cutting-edge, human-relevant research.

For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Yesterday, a stressed camel from Shirley Farms petting zoo attacked and killed two bystanders. The camel paid with his life. Below, please see a statement from PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Debbie Metzler:

Shirley Farms has a history of failing to have employees supervise interactions with camels, among many other citations for violating federal law, so this incident is tragic yet unsurprising. Injuries abound when animals are exploited for entertainment, and PETA urges everyone to avoid sleazy roadside attractions as if lives depended on it—because they do.

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

Do you think you can get a perfect score on our Iditarod quiz? Test your knowledge about what really happens to dogs in the Iditarod: