For Immediate Release, Monday 31 October, 2022 

Photos: Dinosaur Dash at Flemington to Protest Melbourne Cup

Melbourne – Dinosaurs converged on Flemington today as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses (CPR) joined forces to protest Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup with a t-rex race.

Photos and videos of the event are available here.

Running (and sometimes stumbling) toward a giant breakaway banner that reads “Finish The Cruel, Prehistoric Melbourne Cup Now”, activists  donned inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex costumes and carried signs reading “Horse Racing Is Prehistoric”. The entertaining event was fun, but the message was serious: cruel and archaic  horse racing should be relegated to pre-history.

“The Melbourne Cup – and all events that drive senseless horse deaths and catastrophic injuries in the name of greed – deserve to go extinct” said PETA’s Emily Rice. “Today’s dinosaur dash proves you can have fun by cheering on willing participants who enjoy themselves. No one needs to be harmed for you to be entertained”.

“We are inviting people to boycott horse racing by saying Nup to the Cup and joining one of these many events taking place across the country” said CPR Campaign Director Elio Celotto. “We’ll be just up the road from Flemington holding an amazing party, with music, dancing and some wild and whacky human races. Everyone is welcome to join us”.

PETA’s motto reads, in part, that animals are not ours to use for entertainment, while CPR reports that 139 racehorses died on Australian tracks in the past racing year, in addition to the thousands of horses who die every year off the track from racing-related injuries, or those who killed for simply not being profitable.
 
For more information, please visit PETA.org.au and horseracingkills.com.