“You bet, they die.”
Before a high profile horse race, activists stand outside the gates with protest signs. Although horse racing has been revered for centuries, recent research has exposed the industry as unethical for the young horses that serve as its centerpiece. The physical symbols of horse racing: the extravagant hats, wealthy betters and peak equine athletes, are all glamorous.
What goes on behind the scenes is not.
Horse racing has been a staple of American culture for hundreds of years: in fact, the first recorded American racetrack was constructed and used for races in 1665. These events — especially high-volume races like the Kentucky Derby or Preakness Stakes — are renowned for their glitz and glamour. On the surface, horse racing is an alluring and sport, a display of wealth, a potential to win a fortune and the celebration of the incredible athleticism of the equine.
However, while easy to perceive racing as a healthy competition between the animals, it can cause physical damage to the horse, abusive practices, and even more upsetting, appalling numbers of horses doomed for slaughterhouses.
To fully understand the magnitude of the damage that is caused to young horses used for racing, one must have a working knowledge of the regular, ‘healthy’ training practices used by people training horses for hobby or even other intense equine sports.
Training: How Early is Too Early?
Most horses do not mature until between five to seven years old. Thoroughbreds, the breed almost exclusively used in high-stakes racing in the U.S., are frequently thought to ‘mature quicker.’ However, this is not the case.
All horse breeds mature at the same rate and none should be ridden as prematurely as Thoroughbreds are. According to Equine Wellness, “the last structures to mature are the vertebrae, fairly important given your horse’s back is what you will be asking him to carry you on, and that damage in the back can result in an inability to perform the movements and tasks you’d like him to.”
It is essential that young horses are not broken to ride too early in their lives. The first three to even five years of their lives are crucial for their bone and joint development, and being ridden (no matter how gently by how light of a rider) is too strenuous for their maturing skeleton. At some stables, Thoroughbreds are trained and ridden intensely as early as a year.
Many Thoroughbreds are exercised strongly at certain periods of the day, and then confined to a tiny stall for the remainder of the time. Some stables defend this practice, saying that there are many risks for a racehorse to be outside in a pasture where they could face attacks by wild animals or injure themselves on fences.
Yet, one of the most disturbing, yet most hidden, aspects of horse racing is the immense number of horses who are not successful in racing who then face fates in the slaughterhouse. Horse racing is a demanding industry, and while proven winners will almost certainly face a life of breeding and retirement, the thousands of losing horses will lose their place at the stable.
Some horses can even be deemed ‘losers’ in their early training; horses who do not display the desired characteristics or prowess early on will not even be given the chance to race. Others will be given one or two opportunities to perform favorably in lower-stakes races, and if they do not, they will also be of no use to the breeders and trainers. Horse racing is not only detrimental to the horses who are successful in the industry, but have fatal consequences for the hundreds of thousands that are not.
Forbes estimates that 10,000 Thoroughbreds are sent to slaughter each year, with an additional 750 dying on the track annually.
These horses face a horrible fate: since horse slaughter has been illegal in the United States since 2007, they are loaded onto semi-trucks who transport them to Mexico. This process can be extremely abusive and may take weeks. By the time the slaughter truck reaches Mexico, many horses will have already died from starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, or injury. Many of these horses are under five years old, and could have entirely productive careers in another equine sport or as pleasure horses. However, much of the race training centers on the horses only being good at running the track, and many off-the-track Thoroughbreds have behavioral issues as a result of their specialized training.
Drugging and Mistreatment
A 2014 piece by New York Times reporter, Joe Drape, helped to shed light on the issue, especially on the types of abuses sustained by racehorses in the industry. Horses are frequently drugged, forced to run while lame, given pain-masking drugs and even physically abused by trainers. An exposé video by PETA shows horses at a prolific training center being given performance-enhancing drugs routinely, with disastrous physical and mental consequences for the animals.
The undercover video, while painful to watch, is important for skeptics to see, in order to understand the depths of the cruelty and mistreatment that horses suffer at the hands of insiders in the racing industry.
In the video, an anonymous trainer at the stable remarked that “it felt more like working at a pharmacy than a stable” due to the immense amounts of medications horses were being given, in injections, other treatments or just in their feed.
“The main thing we are advocating is for no medication at all in the week leading up to a race. If a horse needs medication, it shouldn’t be on the racetrack,” Kathy Guillermo, an animal rights activist and PETA senior vice president, asserted.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) cites that 24 horses will suffer a fatal breakdown during racing every week. This does not even take into account the number of horses that sustain injuries that they will still be forced to perform with, nor the amount of horses that acquire abusive treatment that does not get noticed by activists, other trainers or the public.
Moving Forward: Solutions
The racing industry has a dark and hidden face of abuse and disposal of ‘poor-performing’ horses. Unless horse slaughter is legalized in the United States, and regulated to be as humane as possible, horse racing should not be allowed to continue. However, horse racing brings in a massive amount of revenue to our country (according to a Purdue figure, around $39 billion annually) and is unlikely to be stopped anytime soon. At the very least, breeders and owners should have a limit on how many horses they can breed and race at one time, in order to attempt to reduce the disposal of thousands of perfectly healthy horses each year. Placing limits on the amount of stock that one training facility or stable can have at one time would encourage more careful breeding and more consistency in training.
In any case, racing should only involve horses over five years of age, in order to reduce the physical damage done to young horses in the training process and discourage any formal training of horses younger than three years old.
If more people were aware of the cruelty of the horse racing world, legislative action would be more welcomed. However, because the dark side of the attractive world of racing is so well hidden, most activist groups do not focus on it.
Creating awareness of the other side of racing — the one without flamboyant hats and heart-pounding bets — is the best way to change the sport into something more ethical and sustainable.
