'American Horror Story' Star Appalled by Belmont's Body Count

Star Lillie. Lady Legion.
Baltimore Jack. Those are just three of the 35 horses who have died at the Belmont Park racetrack since the running of last year’s
Belmont Stakes—the last leg of the Triple Crown. 

Academy Award nominee James Cromwell wants attendees of this year’s Belmont Stakes to know those horses’ names and
to know that their lives were taken for a few moments’ entertainment and a few
dollars at the betting window. He has written a letter on PETA’s behalf to
Belmont Park officials asking them to list all 35 horses who died at the track
during the past year on a special commemorative page in the Belmont Stakes
program.

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“Horseracing
is the only sport in America with a regular, predictable death toll, and New
York has been heavily criticized recently for the staggering number of breakdowns
and deaths on its tracks,” James wrote in his letter to Belmont Park. “[H]undreds
of horses have suffered catastrophic breakdowns at Belmont in recent years—and dozens in the last year alone. When their bodies
are hauled away, they seem to be considered no more than collateral damage,
discarded and forgotten by the racing industry.”

This
isn’t the first time that James
has
advocated for horses. In 2011, he asked the racing industry to implement PETA’s
Thoroughbred 360 Lifecycle
Retirement Fund in an effort to prevent “retired” horses from being sent to slaughter. Less than a year later, the industry did adopt a plan based on our proposal.

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Hopefully, officials will listen this
time, too. An average of more than three
horses break down on tracks across the country every single day—enough horses die every year to wipe out an entire Major
League Baseball roster. PETA
is calling on the industry to implement basic improvements to make tracks safer
for horses, including banning horses younger than 3 from races (younger horses’
bones haven’t fully developed yet), limiting the number of races each horse can
run, and banning whipping and injury-masking drugs. In the meantime, you can
help by not watching races and not betting.

Karma Shield. Whistleblower. Join
Forces. It’s almost as if the horses who died at Belmont are begging for
justice from beyond the grave.