PETA Statement: Insider Spots Seavey Throwing a Dog

For Immediate Release:
March 17, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Vice President Colleen O’Brien in response to an Iditarod Insider’s report on the 2020 Iditarod Facebook page (photo available here) that Mitch Seavey picked up and threw a dog while on the race’s livestream:

Mitch Seavey previously admitted to beating, depriving, and neglecting dogs and PETA’s exposé of his facility found dogs chained up and even killed during training, so new reports that he threw a dog down and pinned her muzzle to the ground during this week’s race come as no shock. Just as some hunters are appalled by canned hunts, Iditarod supporters seem to be speaking out against behavior that even they deem to be cruel—and if this insider’s allegations are true, Seavey should face a police investigation and be banned from racing. Regardless, it is time for the cruel Iditarod to be relegated to the history books.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. More information about the campaign against the Iditarod is available on PETA’s website.