Horses Are Dying Across the Pond This Week
Published April 03, 2009 @ 12:35PM PT
Horse racing season is here. And Animal Aid has been documenting it in the UK. Because I'm behind in my Google Reader reading, I failed to realize until this afternoon that this past week was leading up to the Grand National and is therefore Animal Aid's Horse Racing Awareness Week. According to a post on this year's awareness week, "this is to highlight the cruelty of this race in particular, as well as the more widespread exploitation of horses by the racing industry."
Regarding this particular event, Animal Aid explains,
The Grand National is the main race of a three-day meeting at Aintree that killed 30 horses between 1998 and 2008. It is a deliberately punishing and hazardous event: longer than any other (four and a half miles) and presenting 30 uniquely high and challenging obstacles. It features perilous drops, ditches and sharp turns. Forty horses usually take part. Only one-third are likely to finish.
Already, with the event not even finished yet, four horses have died. See "The 'Best' and the 'Worst' Killed at Aintree" and "Aintree 2009 Claims Its First Victim" for more.
Animal Aid's Race Horse Death Watch Web site is heartbreaking and infuriating. Explanation of the site:
Animal Aid's Race Horse Death Watch was launched during the 2007 Cheltenham Festival. Its purpose is to expose and record every on-course Thoroughbred fatality in Britain.
The horse racing authorities have resolutely failed to put horse death information into the public domain, preferring to dismiss equine fatalities as ‘accidental’ and ‘unexplained’. Even when several horses die at a single meeting, the term ‘statistical blip’ is often deployed.
Animal Aid has produced a series of revealing reports over the last seven years exposing the welfare problems associated with Thoroughbred breeding, racing, training and disposal of commercially ‘unproductive’ horses. Our research indicates that around 420 horses are raced to death every year. About 38 per cent die on racecourses, while the others are destroyed as a result of training injuries, or are killed because they are no longer commercially viable.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
StumbleUpon
EmailRelated Posts
Author
-
Stephanie Ernst is an independent animal rights advocate, a vegan, a tree-hugging environmentalist, and a freelance editor and writer. She lives in St. Louis with an aging corgi-lab and an adolescent rescued pit bull. In her advocacy, she works to challenge prevailing perceptions of animals, to show the connections between animal exploitation and other injustices, to help people see that animals are more like us than different, and to encourage compassionate, nonviolent living and eating.
It's sad that the actual racing isn't even the part of the whole "industry" that kills the most horses. In the United States, about 70% - 75% of the horses "bred for racing" end up at slaughter. They don't even require tracks to report the number of horses that die during exercise or meets during the year, which means that we have almost no way to figure out what that number might actually be. Add to that the horrific practice of "nurse mares" - where female horses are impregnated so that they might give milk, and their offspring are then discarded so that the mother can nurse a "higher quality" mare's foal while she is rebred, similar to the dairy industry - and you have one hell of a horrible practice.
I grew up on and around tracks, and dated a boyfriend whose family bred and raced horses in high school, and for a long time I never once thought about all the horrible things that go into racing. Now when I see them run the soaring heart feeling is quickly replaced by an impending doom feeling in the pit of my stomach. My own horse's father was a racehorse, and his end was to be shipped to slaughter after an unsuccessful career as either a runner or a sire, and I can't help but wish people would realize that racing isn't at all about the horses, and their love of running (Rivet, my horse, loves to run). It's about people and making money. Do I believe that everyone in the "industry" is cold and cut-throat and doesn't care about the horses at all? Absolutely not. I just think that when push comes to shove, the horses' welfare is the first thing to go, which means there will never be a way to reform racing and fix the problems.
Posted by Jen Ruff on 04/03/2009 @ 02:11PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Yeah, it amazes me the people who work in this industry and how they desensitize the harsh realities these beautiful creatures face, as if they are pieces of nothing. Shame on those people! For what? So they can make money and get awards for racing a horse (no dis-credit to the animal). Again it's a long long tradition the horse racing but just because it's been done for generations doesn't make it okay. Do any of these people have a conscience, really?
Posted by Darlene Saldana on 04/03/2009 @ 02:26PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Thank you Darlene Saldana for your comment stricking at the heart of the issue. Like I always used to say using animals for making profits for humans is totally CRAP. Yet it goes on throughout the world. Horse-racing is the worst. What about hunting foxes for a sport? What about Rooster - fights in India. The loosing Rooster dies and the winning Rooster is roasted and eaten on the same day as part of the celebration. Bull fights, Dogs(pit-bulls)fights, I think like what Darlene commented earlier, the long centuries old tradition is no excuse for a violent sport. If so, why not arrange for Gladiators to battle to the death like in medieval Rome. Times Change. We have to change with the Times.
Posted by BALAKRISHNA VARMA on 04/04/2009 @ 03:51PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Thanks for the acknowlegdement and yes poor animals of this earth. Human kind has really done them wrong.
Posted by Darlene Saldana on 04/04/2009 @ 08:46PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
It is so very sad to see our sisters and brothers from the heavens being tortured by mankind for greed,ego and entertainment, due to the lack of intelligence,compassion and truth,now living in mankinds hearts, the life you take is your own life, and when you take a life you take from all life,We are all One
Posted by 11 wind aduddell on 12/03/2009 @ 02:16PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Before we get on our high horse (pun intended) about cruelty to animals in the UK let's clean our own act up. In the UK cruelty to animals is a felony and is often punished with jail sentences as well as heavy fines. As far as I am aware it is only a misdemeanor in all of the states of the union. Let's get out of the glass house before we start throwing stones.
Posted by michael sawyer on 04/04/2009 @ 05:44PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
You're making quite an assumption, Michael. I write regularly--and most often--about cruelty to animals right here in the United States. And I will doubtless write about specifically horse racing in the United States as well. But that doesn't preclude me from ever writing about what's happening in other countries too. I don't lack concern for animals in other parts of the world simply because they're in other parts of the world, and not all readers of this blog are in the United States either. There are readers interested in what's happening outside this country too. Animal rights is not a single-nation issue.
Posted by Stephanie Ernst on 04/06/2009 @ 10:47AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
they are accidents. They are not intentially harmed. i don't see what all the fuss is about. but this is just my opinion.
Posted by Mark Camano on 04/05/2009 @ 12:04AM PT
You must be signed in to report content.
Mark,
We understand it is your opinion. Everything said here is an opinion.
The point should be clear: We cannot defend putting these animals into situations that are inherently dangerous. These "accidents" are intrinsically related to the event itself. It's like forcing two people to fight, and then justifying the inevitable harm by reference to "Well, the harm isn't the intent. It just a sport." These animals are suffering and dying because human beings find this "sport" entertaining. That cannot be justified.
For a related discussion, look here:
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/ethical_defenses_and_the_iditarod
Re-read Jen Ruff's comment.
Posted by Alex Melonas on 04/05/2009 @ 12:58PM PT
You must be signed in to report content.