Horses die from: ortic ruptures, pulmonary hemorrhages, blunt-force head traumas, broken necks, severed spines, ruptured ligaments, shattered legs.
We had an op-ed published in the Albany Times Union this morning:
“There’s no getting around it: Horse racing is immoral.” (While I
have provided the text below, please
click on the link to support the paper.)
Recent stories, including right here in the Times Union, on
the massive subsidization of the American horseracing industry have
laid bare the economic unsustainability of racing in the 21st
Century. Lost in all this talk of money, however, is the giant moral
elephant in the room: How can we, a supposedly evolved society,
continue to justify the abuse and killing of horses in the name of
entertainment, and worse, for $2 bets?
Through our unprecedented FOIA reporting, Horseracing Wrongs has
documented over 8,000 deaths at U.S. tracks just since 2014; we
estimate that over 2,000 horses are killed racing or training across
America every year. Over 2,000 – that’s almost six every single day.
Aortic rupture, pulmonary hemorrhage, blunt-force head trauma,
broken necks, severed spines, ruptured ligaments, shattered legs.
In addition, hundreds more die back in their stalls, and worse
still, two separate studies indicate that most – some 10,000-15,000
annually – spent or simply no-longer-wanted racehorses are
mercilessly bled-out and butchered (slaughtered, that is) at
“career’s” end.
Here in New York, since 2009, when the Gaming Commission began
releasing data, over 1,600 horses have perished at the 11 commercial
racetracks (this figure does not account for deaths at private
training facilities). Saratoga Race Course, perhaps the crown jewel
in American racing, averages almost 15 kills per summer; Belmont
Park, the site of the third leg of the Triple Crown, can boast over
100 deaths in just the past two years, easily among the highest
totals in the nation.
But the killing is but a part of the story. There is, too, the
everyday cruelty. To wit:
– Would-be racehorses are forever torn from their mothers and herds
as mere babies. Sold, usually, at the tender age of one, broken, an
industry term meaning to be made pliant and submissive, alone and
terrified, their servitude begins.
– The typical horse does not reach full musculoskeletal maturity
till around the age of six. The typical racehorse is thrust into
intensive training at 18 months, and raced at two. On the maturation
chart, a 2-year-old horse is the rough equivalent of a 6-year-old
child. In our reporting, we see time and again 4-, 3-, even
2-year-old horses dying with chronic conditions like osteoarthritis
and degenerative joint disease – clear evidence of the incessant
pounding these pubescent bodies are forced to absorb.
– In perhaps the worst of it, racehorses are kept locked – alone –
in tiny 12×12 stalls for over 23 hours a day, a cruelty all the
worse for being inflicted on naturally social, herd-animals like
horses. At a 2019 NYS Senate hearing, prominent equine vet Dr. Kraig
Kulikowski likened this cruelty to keeping a child locked in a 4×4
closet for over 23 hours a day. Imagine that. Relatedly, practically
all the horse’s natural instincts and desires are thwarted, creating
an emotional and mental suffering that is brought home with crystal
clarity in the stereotypies commonly seen in confined racehorses:
cribbing, wind-sucking, bobbing, weaving, pacing, digging, even
self-mutilation.
– Racehorses are controlled and subjugated through, among other
means, cribbing collars, nose/lip chains, tongue ties, eye blinders,
mouth bits, and, of course, whips. On that, the very public flogging
administered to racehorses would land a person in jail if done to
his dog in the park. But at the track, it’s simply part of the
tradition.
– By law, racehorses are literal chattel – pieces of property to be
bought, sold, traded, and dumped whenever and however their people
decide. In fact, the average racehorse will change hands multiple
times during his so-called career, adding anxiety and stress to an
already anxious, stressful existence (almost all active racehorses
suffer from ulcers).
Fact is, in regard to how the relative animals are treated,
horseracing is dogracing (one could even argue that, because of
slaughter, horseracing is that much worse). But while the latter is
all but dead – by the end of this year, there will be but two tracks
left in the entire country; dogracing is outright prohibited on
moral grounds in 41 states – horseracing is allowed to persist
under the cover of sport (indeed, “The Sport of Kings”). Please
don’t let this brilliant yet specious marketing cloud your better
judgment. If it looks like animal cruelty, sounds like animal
cruelty, and feels like animal cruelty, then that’s exactly what it
is.