Video: American Racehorse Rescued Outside Korean Slaughterhouse—See Her Now!

For Immediate Release:
January 8, 2024

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

A filthy, malnourished mare was just moments away from entering the largest horse slaughterhouse in South Korea when a team of PETA investigators stopped the truck and rescued her—and as a new PETA video reveals, PETA identified the mare as American Thoroughbred racehorse My Elusive Dream, daughter of 2002 leading North American stud El Prado, and she’s now living the dream: She’s receiving food, affection, and veterinary care in a sanctuary, where she rolls in the grass and runs as she pleases alongside other horses. PETA will soon fly her back home to the U.S., where she’ll live out her years in comfort and safety at Adena Springs, the Florida farm of racetrack conglomerate The Stronach Group, which owned El Prado.

“This gentle horse was shipped overseas and used as a breeding machine until she was sold off to a meat buyer, but PETA’s investigators intervened just in time,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Now she grazes freely, socializes with other horses, and runs whenever she chooses, not at the sound of the starting bell.”

Credit: PETA

My Elusive Dream, who is now 16 years old, was sold to the South Korean racing industry at a Kentucky auction in 2018 after having already borne five foals. She gave birth to three more foals in South Korea before she was sold to a horse-meat farm—a Korea Racing Authority–approved practice for horses deemed no longer useful.

A 2019 PETA investigation uncovered the widespread slaughter of American Thoroughbred racehorses and their offspring in South Korea. PETA’s footage captured inside a slaughterhouse revealed horses trembling as they arrived, many covered with mud and burrs, some bleeding, and one fresh off the track with a bandage on his leg from an injury sustained in a race just three days prior. Workers beat horses to force them onto the kill floor and slaughtered them in full view of others—violations of the Korean Animal Protection Act that resulted in multiple criminal charges and convictions. Following the investigation, The Stronach Group joined PETA in calling for a ban on the sale of North American Thoroughbreds to South Korean racing interests.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.