A Sobering Fact: Brown-Forman’s Newest Shareholder Is … PETA!

Stock Purchase Will Allow PETA to Call On Jack Daniel’s Parent Company to Pull Sponsorship of Dope-Plagued, Cruel Iditarod

For Immediate Release:
March 1, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

This morning, PETA purchased a single share of stock in Brown-Forman—Jack Daniel’s parent company—in order to be able to pressure the company at its upcoming annual meeting to stop funding the deadly Iditarod, which is facing a dog-doping scandal, a musher’s revelation that trainers in the industry have killed “hundreds on top of hundreds” of dogs, a growing death toll, and a Blackfish-like backlash from the release of Sled Dogs, a Fern Levitt documentary. The purchase occurred just days ahead of the 2018 Iditarod’s start.

“Jack Daniel’s management must have been stone drunk when they attached the company’s name to an event that runs dogs to death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s sobering facts about dog doping and deaths should be enough to ensure that Jack Daniel’s stops bankrolling this horrific race.”

PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment,” notes that the Iditarod forces dogs to run up to 100 miles a day across treacherous ice and in subzero temperatures. Five dogs died in less than a week during the 2017 Iditarod, and more than 150 have died since the race began—and that doesn’t include those who died immediately after the race, during training, or while chained to plastic barrels outside during the off-season. Recently, a whistleblower released disturbing photographs and video footage of reportedly dying and sick, injured dogs at a kennel owned by “Iditarod royalty” Dallas Seavey, the four-time race champion at the center of the doping scandal.

Wells Fargo, Guggenheim Partners, and State Farm recently ended their Iditarod sponsorships. Many other major brands—including Costco, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Pizza Hut, Ride Aid, and Safeway—cut ties with the race years ago.

Prior to purchasing stock, PETA protested the whiskey-maker’s Iditarod sponsorship outside Brown-Forman’s annual meeting, a Jack Daniel’s party in Los Angeles, and Jack Daniel’s distillery in Tennessee.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.