Video Reveals Illegal Gambling, Massive Losses Over English Channel, Cruel Killings of Losers as PETA Asks The Queen to Withdraw Support From Cruel Death Races
For
Immediate Release:
March
27, 2013
Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382
London -- On the heels of PETA's undercover video investigation that exposes the disappearance and presumed deaths of tens of thousands of pigeons in cross-Channel races, PETA is calling on Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth—who is a patron of The Royal Pigeon Racing Association and maintains a loft of 250 birds at her Sandringham Estate—to reconsider her participation in the deadly "retirement sport." Secretly shot video footage reveals widespread apparently illegal activity and documents a race in which more than 90 percent of the pigeons did not return and are believed to have died as the already-exhausted birds attempted to cross what racers call "The Pigeon Graveyard," the English Channel. What's more, PETA's investigation and review of racing statistics show that every one of the birds from The Queen's loft who was entered into a race that PETA investigators filmed failed to return home.
Recorded conversations with presidents of top British pigeon-racing organizations and an analysis of more than a decade's worth of publicly available statistics show that, on average, three-quarters of all birds forced to fly the grueling journey across the Channel—which can be 150 miles wide at points and is often reached by the birds only after they have already flown hundreds of miles—go missing, almost all presumed to have died after becoming exhausted, being attacked by predators, hitting electrical wires, or crashing into the sea. Many birds who do return but fall out of the money have their necks painfully and clumsily separated from their spines—caught on film for the first time—to make way for younger birds. Pigeons can live approximately 20 years, but in pigeon racing, most birds do not survive their first year, and only a tiny percentage will make it to 4 years of age because of race deaths and manual "culling."
"By patronizing pigeon racing, The Queen is supporting what PETA's investigation has revealed to be a seedy culture of deliberate cruelty to birds," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "We ask Her Majesty to set an example by withdrawing her support from this greed-driven, dirty, and deadly pastime."
Pigeons serving with the Royal Air Force during World War II were the first recipients of the Dickin Medal—the animals' Victoria Cross—for delivering messages that led to the rescue of British aviators. Yet for nothing more than a bet, pigeon racers today will separate birds from their mates (a cruel practice known as "widowhood") and their young so that they will fly faster. Some racers place plastic eggs beneath hens before races with live worms or live flies inside to trick them into thinking that they have babies waiting for them back at the loft.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.