{"id":47654,"date":"2019-10-18T19:18:14","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T08:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=47654"},"modified":"2019-10-18T19:18:14","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T08:18:14","slug":"thoroughbred-industry-outrage-what-is-to-be-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2019\/10\/thoroughbred-industry-outrage-what-is-to-be-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoroughbred Industry\u00a0Outrage – what is to be done?"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Christopher Hector<\/h2>\n

(for my non-Australian readers, here is a link to a report of the shocking mistreatment of Thoroughbred racehorses<\/a> at a slaughter house, as revealed on the current affairs program, 7.30 Report<\/em>)<\/p>\n

I have to admit I did not see the 7.30 report, and I have no intention of torturing myself by watching it. I guess those of us who have been around the world of the horse, with our ears and eyes open for more than a year or two, are not surprised. But the level of straight out cruelty in the treatment of the horses sent to slaughter was shocking and unexpected, although a trip to the slaughter house for any animal must be a horrific experience, and adds weight to the argument that those of us who have yet to embrace a vegetarian diet, should have to pay extra for meat killed at the farm gate, and ban abattoirs entirely. In future I will buy all my meat from\u00a0Provenir<\/a>, knowing that it has not gone through the horrors of an abattoir.<\/p>\n

The real scandal of the Thoroughbred industry, of which we have been well aware, is of the level of over-production and wastage. It’s the same with greyhounds, trotters, and for that matter Warmbloods. As long as there are more Thoroughbred foals than can possibly fit onto the racetracks of Australia, then a fairly high proportion need to be tossed out of the racing stables before they even have one race.<\/p>\n

It is true that many of these racetrack rejects find loving homes. Indeed the last three horses I rode were all too slow to race, but wonderful generous creatures who gave me \u00a0much pleasure, and who had long and enjoyable lives.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stuart Tinney, and Jeepster an off-the-track Thoroughbred. The combination were part of the Australian Gold Medal Eventing Team at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But it is not true, as the racing authorities keep repeating, that all of these horses can be absorbed into the equestrian world. Once racetrack rejects were Gold Medal winning eventers, even World Class showjumpers, even a few Grand Prix dressage horses – now our front-line riders, even the eventers, are looking for largely Thoroughbred horses, but with enough Warmblood to handle the dressage and showjumping phases. At the last Games, not one of our eventing team was riding a Thoroughbred. It’s nice that many of the competitions are putting on classes, and making special awards for off-the-track horses, but there is no way all the horses coming out of racing can be absorbed by equestrian sports.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Vicki Roycroft and Apache winning the Grand Prix of Sienna in Rome, in 1987<\/em><\/p>\n

As I see it, there is only one way to break the nexus, and that is to drastically reduce the number of Thoroughbred foals that are produced each year. How? Make the registration fee for each foal really expensive, say, $10,000 – and make sure the foals have to be registered to be eligible to race. Then we might get the numbers back to a manageable level, and the young horses would be valuable commodities with every effort made to get them to the track.<\/p>\n

The money gathered from the registration fees – along with some of the obscenely high prize money – could be used to set up a series of re-training facilities. Unless the horse was going to the owner’s property to live out \u00a0racetrack retirement, all horses coming out of racing stables, whether they have made it to a race start or not, \u00a0would go to a re-training centre to be assessed. Now I know I am about to say something that will outrage some, but there are horses that are not capable of adjusting to ‘civilian’ life, we have all met, possibly bred, horses that are simply dangerous, and these horses should be humanely put down at the re-training centre. NO horse should end up at an abattoir, that should be illegal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Judy Dierks and Galoubet, dressage winners at Grand Prix level<\/em><\/p>\n

The horses from the re-training centres should be placed with people who have participated in horse care courses at those same centres, and demonstrated that they are capable of their care.<\/p>\n

The number of horses that are difficult or impossible to re-train should be monitored, and trainers who are producing more than their share of damaged horses investigated, and where necessary, banned from racing.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t help that our Equestrian Federation likes to mount ‘cutesy’ campaigns suggesting that people should enrich their lives by purchasing a pony or a horse. Taking care of equines is not easy. It requires knowledge – and those good old horse people who could provide advice to the novice have largely disappeared – and resources. Horses are large, unpredictable and dangerous, a responsible Equestrian Federation would be warning potential horse owners of the pitfalls.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, when racing authorities can put up $14 million on a single race, there is obviously more than enough money to solve the situation. Everyone who cares about horses should give thanks to the 7 .30 report for exposing horrific cruelty, it must shock the Thoroughbred industry into action, or else they may just discover that having turned the sport of kings into a fashion fad, just how fickle fashion is…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are the final three horses in my riding life – Fad (Picasso), Silver (Whispering Jack) and Gallie ( who won a Novice hack class), no one remembers their racing names, they were way too slow, but what wonderful wonderful creatures they were…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The racing industry must face up to reality – far too many Thoroughbreds are being bred, and the consequences are horrific!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[1998,1997],"class_list":["post-47654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-racehorse-slaughter","tag-thoroughbred-outrage"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47654"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47663,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47654\/revisions\/47663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}