After proof was found of animal abuse, Pepsi Co. canceled its sponsorship for the upcoming annual Tennesee Walking Horse championship, the National Celebration, according to ABC News investigative report.
A spokesperson for Pepsi told ABC News that the termination of the relationship between them and the organization, whose tournament is set to take place from July 12-14, 2012 in Shelbyville, according to the event's website, was "effectively immediately" after seeing video evidence of physical abuse of trained horses. The soft drink's logo was removed on Wednesday from the Celebration website, prior to the investigative look revealing the extreme levels of equine cruelty set to broadcast on ABC's "Nightline."
The footage released by ABC News on the Tennessee Walking Horses showed that one of the top trainers, Jackie McConnell, was beating and torturing several horses at his stables outside Memphis as a means to "produce a high-stepping gait" to win a championship. Specifically, McConnell was found, in the undercover footage, beating the horses with wooden sticks, and sticking then animals with electric cattle prods "as part of a training protocol to make them lift their feet in the pronounced gait judges like to see," ABC News said.
McConnell was also recorded applying chemicals on the horses' ankles, and then wrap plastic on the ankles so the chemicals could eat into their skin.
"[The plastic wrap] creates intense pain and then the ankles are wrapped with large metal chains so the horses flinch, or raise their feet even higher," Keith Dane of the Humane Society told ABC News. "All too often, you have to cheat to win in this sport."
ABC noted that the Department of Agriculture, upon an inspection of the horses in 2011, found that all 52 animals checked had "some sort of foreign substance" around their front hooves, which they deduced was to either cause the horses pain, or to hide it.
McConnell did not comment or apologize about what was shown in the footage, when ABC News approached him. Additionally, Dr. Steve Mullins of SHOW, a group that oversees the inspection of horses before major events like the Tennessee Walking Horse tournament, noted to ABC news that cruelty was not necessary to win, and that there may even have been an "innocent explanation" of why the foreign substances were found on the horses by the Department of Agriculture.
"They do not have to cheat to win," Mullins told ABC News. "You don't have to do this kind of junk to win. ... And we are terribly against this stuff."
