Victory! Jack Daniel’s Ends Iditarod Sponsorship After PETA Campaign

PETA Staff Celebrate With Bottles of Whiskey—and PETA Sends Vegan ‘Thank You’ Chocolates to Whiskey Maker

For Immediate Release:
June 27, 2018

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After a PETA campaign—including protests outside the headquarters of Jack Daniel’s and e-mails from more than 186,000 PETA supporters urging the company to end its 15-year sponsorship of the cruel Iditarod race, in which many dogs have died—the whiskey maker’s Louisville-based parent company, Brown-Forman, has confirmed that it will no longer sponsor the deadly dog race. In thanks for the decision, PETA is sending the company a box of delicious dog paw–shaped vegan chocolates—and an elated PETA member is donating bottles of Jack Daniel’s to PETA offices in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and Norfolk, Virginia.

“Jack Daniel’s did the tail-wagging, right thing by cutting ties with a race that forces dogs to run so far and so fast that some even choke to death on their own vomit,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman, a teetotaler. “Today, PETA will toast the company’s business-savvy decision to leave the Iditarod in the dust.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—first contacted Jack Daniel’s about ending its Iditarod sponsorship after more than five dogs died in less than one week during the 2017 race. More than 150 dogs have died since the race began, and those are just the reported deaths—this number doesn’t include those who died immediately after the race, during training, or while chained to plastic barrels outside during the off season. PETA’s dogged campaign against Jack Daniel’s included holding numerous public protests and becoming a shareholder in order to approach the company from the inside.

Jack Daniel’s joins a long list of companies—including Costco, Guggenheim Partners, Maxwell House, Nestlé, Panasonic, Pizza Hut, Rite Aid, Safeway, State Farm, and Wells Fargo—that have cut ties with the Iditarod, and PETA is now calling on Coca-Cola to follow suit.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.