“What the….?â Guess the purpose of these weird and disturbing farming implements
Posted 31 Oct 2024
Posted on the 16th May 2007
A new report, published this week by Animal Aid, describes a series of painful and often lethal laboratory experiments conducted on race horses, mountain ponies and other equines. Many of the experiments are directly, or indirectly, funded by racing industry bodies, such as the Horserace Betting Levy Board.
Drawing directly on the researchersâ own accounts that have been published in equine veterinary and other scientific journals, A Dead Cert describes horses being deliberately infected with devastating viruses; pregnant animals undergoing abdominal surgery and subsequently aborting their young; other pregnant animals being deliberately underfed; and newborn foals subjected to stress experiments. Most of the âproceduresâ end with the horses being killed and their tissues examined.
The declared aim of the experiments is to understand why race horses damage their limbs and suffer other illnesses – and to deliver remedies. A principal practitioner of this black art is the Animal Health Trust (See Note 2), a veterinary charity based in Newmarket, the home of horseracing. Professor W R âTwinkâ Allen, of Cambridge Universityâs Equine Fertility Unit, was involved in two of the ten experiments featured in A Dead Cert. Allen was reported to have produced the worldâs first test-tube foals and is now engaged in horse cloning experiments. His son-in-law is jockey Frankie Dettori.
Says Animal Aid Director, Andrew Tyler:
The horrific experiments described in A Dead Cert are claimed to be for the greater good: a few horses suffer so that many can benefit. That formulation is morally corrupt. The high levels of injury and developmental problems these invasive experiments are supposed to address are the product of racing industry greed and callousness. Commissioning lethal âscientificâ experiments on horses is the industryâs attempt to avoid its responsibility to the horses it so readily and systematically exploits.