BETTING ON LIFE
Many people consider horse racing to be a harmless sport where the animals are willing participants who thoroughly enjoy the thrill. It is true that behind the scenes there is a story of immense suffering. Horses are social animals that live mostly on the plains, but racehorses are usually housed in isolation and confinement. Stereotyped behavior - which manifests as abnormal, usually repetitive behaviors resulting from frustration, stress, and inhibition of natural behavior is not uncommon in racehorses. This includes the prevalence of "crib-bitting" (repetitive oral behavior in which the horse sucks in large amounts of air) and so-called "swaying" (repetitive behavior where the horse sways on its front legs, shifting its weight back and forth).
Racing puts horses at significant risk of injury and sometimes death due to trauma (eg. broken neck) or emergency euthanasia. The odds in this industry are not on the horse's side. Research in Australia on the risk of death in horse racing on the flat ground found approximately one death per 1000 horse starts. Every week, an average of 24 horses suffer fatal injuries on racetracks across the United States, and that number continues to rise. Between 2009 and 2011, approximately 3,600 horses died during racing—635 in California alone. These statistics do not even include the number of horses killed before the races themselves. In 2011, PETA secretly attended thoroughbred horse auctions called "under-tack" shows, where young horses are forced to participate in reckless speed trials - which one jockey called "suicide shows" - to impress potential buyers. PETA has documented how forcing these young, underdeveloped horses to run at extreme speeds leads to fatal, life-threatening injuries.
‘’Pushing these immature two-year-old horses to speed before they have reached physical and mental maturity is recklessly dangerous and systemically harmful to the animal, and has also proven unreliable to potential buyers as an indicator of future racing ability.‘’
— Dr. Sheila Lyons
TRAINING METHODS
Horses are routinely subjected to the use of painful methods in training and racing with little understanding of their effect on horses and whether they are effective. The most worrisome is the routine use of whips and illegal electroshock devices in training and races. Whips can cause localized trauma and tissue damage to the horse. Moreover, the last 100 meters of the race - when horses can be whipped an unlimited number of times - is precisely the time when horses are more tired and have less capacity to respond. In a 2008 race in the US, a horse called Appeal to the City suffered a hemorrhage around the eye when jockey Jeremy Rose "extremely abused the whip". During his victory in the Kentucky Derby, American Pharoah's jockey Victor Espinoza cracked the whip at least 32 times. In 2013, PETA documented that top trainers and jockeys admitted to using illegal electroshocks on horses.
An independent poll by the RSPCA in Australia found that 69% of Australians believe that horses should not be whipped in the normal course of racing, and 71% who attend or bet on horse racing would not be swayed if whips were banned and continued would participate in horse racing events and activities. This is in line with a previous independent national opinion poll conducted by the RSPCA in 2017. The racing industry has long pursued a policy of sharing the whips as a way to make racing fairer and safer. However, a recent study compared 126 "flogging" and "no-flogging" races in the United Kingdom and found no difference in track movement, track interference, incidents related to jockey behavior, or race finish times. Whips do not make races faster, fairer, or safer.
Also, one of the more inhumane methods in the racing industry is the use of 'tongue ties' - a narrow strap that ties the horse's tongue to the lower jaw in an attempt to prevent 'choking' at high intensity or to avoid biting when it causes discomfort. It is used because it is easier to control the horse when the reins put pressure on the gum on the horse's tongue forcing them to be compliant. Problems associated with using a tongue tie include signs of pain, anxiety, distress in the horse, difficulty swallowing, cuts and lacerations on the tongue, bruising, and swelling. Tongue ties are uncomfortable and distressing to the horse, are used without any need for veterinary diagnosis, and there is little or no evidence that their use is effective or beneficial.
DOPING
The misuse of drugs for non-therapeutic purposes, both legal and illegal, is an unenviable statistic. Many experts argue that performance-enhancing drugs often mask pain, allowing horses to race and train with injuries that would otherwise be too painful to run. In 2013, PETA investigated the stables of leading trainer Steve Asmussen and found that nearly every horse was given a variety of drugs and "treatments," including the following:
Thyroxine—a prescription drug used to treat hypothyroidism and a beneficial metabolic booster—was given to most, if not all, of the horses, apparently without any evidence of thyroid disease.
Lasix - a diuretic intended only to prevent pulmonary hemorrhage during extreme exercise in some horses that also masks the presence of other drugs and enhances performance by causing rapid weight loss - was seemingly administered to every horse in the stable. Lasix is banned on race day in most countries, but over 90% of thoroughbreds in the US are given the drug within hours of the race.
Horses' legs were burned with liquid nitrogen (a process called "freezing") and other irritating chemicals, causing excruciating pain—supposedly to stimulate blood flow to their aching legs.
Horses were given muscle relaxants, sedatives, and other strong drugs to treat ailments such as ulcers, lameness, and inflammation, even when the animals had no visible symptoms.
LIFE AFTER "CAREER"
About 130,000 American horses were slaughtered in Mexico and Canada in 2015, but the rodeo, racing and show industries—along with other irresponsible breeders—continue to cull hundreds of thousands of horses annually. Two-thirds of the horses that go to slaughter are so-called square horses, and many have been kicked out of the rodeo or racing industry. The thoroughbred racing industry is estimated to send about 10,000 horses to slaughter each year, meaning that half of the 20,000 new foals born each year will be killed for meat. In 2011, PETA released a video inside a breeding barn in Darley, Kentucky, one of the world's most expensive thoroughbred breeding facilities, where stallions were forced to "cover" more than a hundred mares each during the breeding season.
Unlike animals raised specifically for meat, the vast majority of horses destined for slaughter are treated with anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, anti-parasitic drugs, hormones, and even illegal performance-enhancing drugs known to be dangerous to humans. Of greatest concern is a commonly used nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug called phenylbutazone, or "bute," a known human carcinogen that can cause bone marrow toxicity and even death. Bute is banned for use on animals raised for meat, but there is no reliable system in place to ensure that horses killed for human consumption are not treated with bute or other highly toxic and banned substances.
In 2021, Stansall and Animal Aid worked with BBC Panorama to expose horse slaughterhouses. An investigation has found that around 4,000 thoroughbred horses have been killed in abattoirs in the UK and Ireland since 2019. "Horse meat is about as healthy as food contaminated with DDT." — Nicholas Dodman, professor at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. The devastating fact is that the reason why this industry still exists is the income from taxes in 53 countries of the world of over 100 billion dollars a year.
