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After high profile accidents during the 2014 palios in the Italian villages of Siena and Pistoia, the future of the palios is being called into question.  The mayor of Pistoia has already announced that the 2015 polio is canceled.  The President of the Tuscan Greens party called the palio “carousel of death which had killed seven horses and made another 17 lame.”  A former Italian minister said, “Events like these have nothing to do with culture and tradition, but they are a throwback to a time in which absolutely no account was taken of animals’ welfare.”

Hiding behind a veneer of tradition and glamor, horse-racing is an exploitive, cruel event in which the horses almost always die at the end — on the track or in the slaughterhouse.  To their owners who claim to love their horses, they are merely money making commodities to be used and discarded when no longer profitable.  To learn more about horse-racing and to see how you can help, please visit PETA.