As part of its ongoing campaign to raise awareness about the truth behind the commercial horse racing industry, PETA has just released a stark new YouTube video called “Horse Racing in 60 Seconds Flat.”

The new video was created after one of PETA’s undercover investigators had spent time working on the Churchill Downs race track in Louisville, Ky., and on the Saratoga Race Course in New York. The investigator worked for the well-known thoroughbred trainer Steve Asmussen, whose horses have won more races in the last decade than those of any other U.S. trainer.

In the one-minute clip, we are given a harrowing glimpse into the life of a race horse: a life marked by violent treatment, painful injuries, and the continual administration of performance-enhancing drugs, all leading up to the animal’s inevitable slaughter, once it is deemed to no longer be “fast enough.”

PETA says, “Racehorses are given an aggressive, daily regimen of pain-masking drugs and treatments. These drugs don’t appear to be used for genuinely therapeutic purposes – they’re used to keep horses going when their legs and lungs are screaming ‘Stop!’ Horses in the racing industry are so routinely doped up that they have been labeled ‘chemical horses,’ and their feet, bones, and bodies are progressively destroyed as a result.”

Want to help? Here’s how:

• Never attend or place a bet on any horse racing event, including the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
• Contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and ask them to Support the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2013, Senate Bill 973, and House Bill 2012, which would increase oversight and penalties for the overuse of drugs in the horse racing industry.
• Sign and share PETA’s horse racing petition here.
• Help increase awareness of the brutal reality behind the horse racing industry by sharing this article, or PETA’s YouTube video.

Image source: Jessica Cross/Flickr