Pepsi has announced that they are dropping their sponsorship of the Walking Horse National Celebration. This comes after a ABC News broadcast footage of a horse in training for a show being beaten by a trainer.
“We have ended our sponsorship of the event,” Pepsi spokesman Vincent Bozek said without elaborating.
The Humane Society of the United States conducted an undercover investigation and filmed the video which was given to ABC News. An animal rights activist went to work in a horse barn and secretly taped the abuse in March and April 2011, which showed the horses being beaten with wooden sticks and poked with electric cattle prods; their ankles were slathered with caustic chemicals and ankles wrapped with plastic to amplify the pain.
This is designed to cause the horse to raise its front legs high while in the show ring. The practice has been so pervasive that the show hired hired veterinarians to tour shows and inspect the horses.
“For any animal to be abused like that . . . I totally disagree with that,” said Dr. Stephen Mullins, president of SHOW, the organization that inspects the horses.
Keith Dane, the Humane Society’s director of equine protection, applauded the Pepsi decision, which he said might help clean up the industry. “This procedure of soring has been going on far too long . . . the industry itself has been allowed to self-police and with very poor results,” Dane said.
Source: Reuters
