Chrysler Faces Major Flak Over Iditarod Sponsorship

PETA Protesters Will Deliver List of Canine Fatalities to Car Company With Message: Cut Franchise’s Ties to Cruel Race

For Immediate Release:
March 1, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

To mark the start of the Iditarod on Saturday, PETA supporters are set to descend on a Chrysler dealership in Boston to express their outrage over the car company’s support of the deadly dog race—in which more than 150 dogs have died since its inception. Protesters’ signs will read, “Chrysler: Stop Driving Dogs to Their Death.”

When:    Saturday, March 2, 1:30–3 p.m.

Where:    Quirk Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM Dorchester, 40 Hallet St., Boston

“The trail is a graveyard for dogs, who, year after year, choke on their own vomit and die during the Iditarod race,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Chrysler to unleash its name from a miserable spectacle that forces dogs to run up to 100 miles a day until their paws are cut and bleeding and their bodies give out.”

More than 150 dogs have died during the Iditarod’s history, and this number doesn’t include all those who’ve died during the off-season while chained to a post in the freezing cold or who were killed simply because they couldn’t run fast enough. During the 2018 Iditarod, 350 dogs suffering from illness, exhaustion, or injury were pulled from the race, and choking on their own vomit is the leading cause of death for dogs who don’t survive the event.

Jack Daniel’s recently ended its 15-year Iditarod sponsorship, joining a long list of companies—including Coca-Cola, Costco, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, and Wells Fargo—that have cut ties with the race following appeals by PETA.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a supremacist view of the world. For more information, please visit PETA.org.