Posted on the 7th September 2024
National Racehorse Week kicks off today: a week-long marketing campaign in which the racing industry attempts to portray horse racing as an idyll and race horses as willing, cherished participants. This is a fairytale, as recently obtained figures from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) illustrate. Animal Aid submitted a Freedom of Information request to the FSA and were shocked to learn that in the first 6 months of this year, 107 horses with Weatherbys* passports were slaughtered in England. 47.7% of these were just five years old or younger.
It is absolutely abhorrent that horses from the racing industry are still spending their final moments in the horror of the slaughterhouse. This abuse is indicative of an industry which overbreeds horses every year in the hope of creating a few ‘winners’. Thoroughbred horses can live until they are around thirty years old, but once no longer deemed ‘useful’ to the industry (either by making money as a race horse, or being used for breeding purposes), horses are vulnerable.
This pyramid system favours a very small number of horses at the top whilst they are making money for the industry, but leaves thousands of horses at the bottom who are discarded and unwanted. Until this crippling overbreeding issue is addressed, horses from the racing industry will continue to suffer. (And of course, more could be done by this billion pound industry which funnels so very little of its profits into the actual care/aftercare of horses).
Horses being sent to slaughter - Animal Aid investigation 2019/2020
Despite the National Racehorse Week website claiming that race horses ‘live the best life’, we know that horses in the racing industry face exploitation from cradle to grave. Gruelling training regimes, excruciating riding aids (such as bits and the whip) and risk of horrific injury are just some of the ways race horses can suffer. All of this occurs in a system which only values horses on what they can provide for humans; it is ruthless, and there are very few ‘winners’ for the animals.
*Weatherbys are the passport issuers for thoroughbred horses born in Great Britain.
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