RIDING FOR A FALL - Summary
Animal Aid's Riding for a Fall report is issued to coincide with Horse Racing Awareness Week 2003.
Horse racing provides immense rewards for the leading owners, trainers and jockeys. Never in the history of the 'sport of kings' has so much money and prestige been on offer to those who reach its summit.
Yet beneath the glossy facade, the very foundations of the sport are being threatened, due to the reckless manner in which the industry is exploiting its most precious resource: the Thoroughbred horse.
A comprehensive analysis by Animal Aid of industry data, reports in scientific journals and commentaries by leading racing insiders, demonstrates that the modern Thoroughbred is buckling under increasing and relentless pressure.
The headline figures tell their own story:
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Some 15,000 foals are bred for racing in Britain and Ireland every year, but only one third are deemed sufficiently strong and healthy actually to be entered into racing. (1) Most of the rest are discarded. This compares with the 1920s when far fewer animals were produced, but when more than 80% of foals are reported to have made the grade. (2)
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Whereas bone fractures in animals racing on the flat were comparatively rare 20 years ago, the attrition rate is now approaching that of jump racers. Amongst a typical group of 100 flat-racing horses, one fracture will occur every month. (3)
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Serious racing-related illnesses such as bleeding lungs and gastric ulcers are now endemic. 82% of flat race horses older than three years of age suffer from exercise induced pulmonary haemorrhage (EIPH), which can cause blood to leak from the nostrils. (4) Gastric ulcers are present in no fewer than 93% of horses in training, in whom the condition gets progressively worse. When horses are retired, the condition improves. (20)
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The top breeding stallions are so over-worked that two of the three most coveted males both died in 2001 from suspected exhaustion. Breeding females are subjected to artificial treatments to control and speed up reproduction - a regime that compromises their welfare. And pressure is building to introduce previously prohibited technologies, such as artificial insemination, embryo transfer and cloning.
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Rather than confront the endemic problems that lead to thousands of horses every year failing to make the grade and hundreds more dying from race-related injuries and disease, the industry is looking for 'answers' by commissioning grotesque laboratory experiments on live horses. Recent examples include animals being made to walk for months on treadmills and then killed for analysis; others being subjected to deliberate wounding or to infection - while pregnant - with viruses that cause paralysis and abortion. There have also been a series of surrogate birth experiments where embryos were switched between ponies and Thoroughbreds. Some of the offspring were born with muscle wastage and freakishly long, deformed legs.
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The picture that emerges from this Animal Aid investigation is of a racing industry that now has much in common with livestock production. Both enterprises are committed to profit-driven mass output of progeny and the acceptance of a high 'wastage' rate. In both industries there is an excessively heavy burden on breeding stock and high rates of endemic disease and musculoskeletal injury. The key difference is that the fate of sheep, cattle, pigs and chickens is limited to being mass produced, killed and eaten. They are not also required to serve as high-performance athletes.
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Though Thoroughbred horses are inherently fine runners, the increasing burdens placed upon them by the racing industry militate against their ability to perform, and amount to extreme, cruel and unsustainable treatment.
The first section of Riding for a Fall examines the workload of the modern breeding stallion, the mare's burden, and the throughput and output of the horse racing industry.
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