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This week, the Coalition to End Horse Racing Subsidies—started by PETA and NYCLASS—put boots on the ground in Albany, New York, to provide critical information to legislators on the tax breaks that New York gives to the wealthy people who buy horses to use for racing. We urged officials to support the bills that would do away with this welfare for the rich.

The Wealthy Benefit While Horses Suffer

The ultra-rich are the primary beneficiaries of these significant tax breaks—burdening ordinary taxpayers and depriving communities of essential resources. In fact, if an individual purchases a horse for recreational or show purposes, they do pay a sales tax. Estimates show that New York state misses out on over $100 million a year in sales tax because of this racing tax exemption.

The 2022 auction of yearlings at Saratoga racetrack generated an average sale price of $468,000 each. It seems obvious that the individuals, racing partnerships, prominent racing and training farms, celebrity trainers, investment consortiums, and international bourgeoisie who can pay that much or more per horse can easily afford to pay their fair share of New York sales tax.

Help Us Help Horses

If you live in New York, please contact your representatives to support A1438 and S481, which would repeal the sales tax exemption on the purchase of horses who may be used for racing. New Yorkers deserve public funding from the ultra-wealthy, and horses deserve protection from humans who would harm them—repealing the tax exemption is just one step in dismantling the subsidies that grant the failing horse racing industry its preferential status in the state.

Please take time to learn more about New York’s other horse racing subsidies and support our work in defense of horses with the Coalition to End Horse Racing Subsidies:

In the 1980s, two separate groups of experimenters set out to answer a not-so-burning question: Will a sentient being live a longer, healthier life when kept in a state of perpetual hunger for, say, 40 years?

At the University of Wisconsin–Madison and at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory in Bethesda, Maryland, experimenters kept rhesus macaques on a starvation-like diet that fell 30% below their minimum standard daily calorie requirement.

©️ University of Wisconsin | Jeff Miller

And they kept them hungry like this for four decades.

What was their final, earth-shattering conclusion? Dunno, says the journal Nature.

The UW-Madison experimenters said the lives of their hungry monkeys were improved by food deprivation, but those at NIH said the opposite about theirs.

These conflicting outcomes, according to one experimenter, “cast a shadow of doubt on the translatability of the caloric-restriction paradigm as a means to understand aging and what creates age-related disease vulnerability.”

Starving monkeys isn’t science, you say? Who could possibly have predicted that?

We could have.

It’s apparently not enough to deprive monkeys of everything that makes life worth living and slowly drive them insane by keeping them caged in solitary confinement, interrupted only by periods of pain from needles and blood draws and myriad other daily horrors, but to also intentionally keep them hungry—for 40 years—is simply demented.

This is yet another horror story in an unfortunately endless litany of wasted lives, wasted money, and wasted time amassed on the taxpayers’ dole by experimenters who are doing nothing to help anyone and leaving misery in their wake.

PETA has a simple message for how to end these wrongs: Put modern science into all laboratories. Adopt PETA scientists’ Research Modernization Deal, a clear-cut roadmap to ending animal experiments and shifting to cutting-edge research models that will put U.S. laboratories on the vanguard of scientific innovation, leaving this garbage behind.

What is influenza D, and why is it everywhere? We’ve already covered how people who murder animals for their flesh are breeding infectious diseases, and a recently released NPR piece provides a new perspective on the matter.

The article covers a small study conducted from 2019 to 2020 that found that influenza D, a bovine flu that has infected 50% of cows across the U.S., had jumped to 90% of the workers on five dairy farms. A 2016 study of farms that raise cows for meat or dairy found that 18% of the nearby population who didn’t work on them had influenza D antibodies. This means the study participants had been infected with the virus.

You may be surprised that you’ve never heard of something that’s infected so many people. To date, the influenza D virus has had a minimal impact on human health. But that may change in the coming days, weeks, or months. How do we stop influenza D and other viruses from starting the next pandemic?

Pandemics Start With Animal Suffering

As we’ve continued to grapple with the deadly, globally detrimental COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve had to make many changes in our daily lives. We’re cautious about indoor gatherings, we socially distance, and we wear a mask when we’re ill.

One thing that hasn’t changed may be the most dangerous: animal farms, the ground zero for future disease outbreaks. Although more and more farms are using terms like “grass-fed” or “organic” in an attempt to persuade consumers that they’re small, safe operations through techniques known as “greenwashing” and “humane-washing,” there’s simply no way to exploit animals at scale without circulating disease. COVID-19 is just the latest in a series of zoonotic epidemics and pandemics that have plagued humans, and it certainly won’t be the last, given how the food industry treats animals.

Prevention Is the Best Medicine

The cramped, desolate lots where farmers imprison most animals exploited for food are accelerated breeding grounds for super-illnesses. The only reasonable course of action we can take to slow the rapid mutation of diseases like influenza D is to stop farming animals. If you work in the animal-farming industry, stop! There are better ways to make a living. And preventing the next pandemic means going vegan, protesting against animal agriculture, and engaging in other forms of activism to help shut down the meat, egg, and dairy industries.

© Jo- Anne McArthur/ We Animals

Justice for Animals Means a Safer Planet

Living vegan is the most powerful way you can help animals exploited on farms. By going vegan, you’ll save nearly 200 animals per year, sending a powerful message to the food industry that you don’t support dangerous and cruel animal exploitation.

PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help you make the switch. It’s packed with recipes, tips, and encouragement. As individual consumers, it’s up to us to create a more just and sustainable food system for humans and our fellow animals. Do your part to help prevent the next pandemic before it’s too late:

Great news! Any Given Saturday, the 19-year-old American stallion who ran in the 2007 Kentucky Derby and won the $1 million Grade 1 Haskell Invitational Stakes, has been safely returned home after eight years in South Korea. He now lives at Old Friends, a Kentucky sanctuary for retired racehorses. We’re overjoyed to see him where he belongs, and we’re grateful to his former owner Bill Casner and Old Friends for facilitating his rescue and return.

PETA conducted an undercover investigation into racehorse slaughter in South Korea, which showed that only 3% of retired racehorses transition to other “careers” after their short racing lives are over. Some mares are turned into breeding machines, but workers kill the vast majority.

Our exposé “K-Cruelty” revealed the horrors retired racehorses are subjected to in South Korea, sparking international outrage. This footage ultimately inspired Any Given Saturday’s safe return home.

South Korea’s horse slaughter industry, encouraged by the Korea Racing Authority (KRA), has claimed the lives of many horses, who all deserved to live out their days in peace. We were shocked and heartbroken to discover that another Kentucky Derby runner, Private Vow, had been slaughtered there, along with a son of Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown.

Our investigation, which also revealed that the meat from slaughtered racehorses contained dangerous drugs, effectively eliminated racehorse meat from being sold for human consumption in South Korea, but our work isn’t over. Their corpses are now processed into items like pet food and beauty products instead. We’re demanding a humane system for racehorse aftercare.

Tell the KRA: No More!

We hope Any Given Saturday’s story will serve as a reminder that all horses deserve to be treated with kindness and respect, both during and after their racing careers.

Please write to the KRA and urge it to stop supporting and promoting horse slaughter. If it commits to developing a comprehensive retirement system modeled on the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance and designates a mandatory 3% of purse money toward retirement, most former racehorses in South Korea will be protected from the worst abuses they face now.