Ethical veganism is a philosophy – a way of life that holds that it is fundamentally wrong to use (and of course kill) other species for our ends. (I must include the “ethical” qualifier, as there are people who are vegan only for health – their own, of course – which to my mind is but more of the anthropocentrism that put animals in our servitude in the first place.)
While reviewing the charts, I came across an entrant in the 8th race at Del Mar Saturday: “Vegan.” Yes, Vegan. Now, it’s possible that someone in Reddam Racing, Vegan’s breeder and first owner, is one of those aforementioned food-vegans, and the name is simply a celebration of diet. But seeing how for the vast majority of Americans veganism is synonymous with animal rights, the best we can say about Reddam is that they are stupid. I, however, think it a bit more nefarious. For me, this, the Vegan racehorse, is a taunt – the racing people having fun at our expense. For shame.
The other day I had noted a horse named “Catania” had been pulled up and vanned off at Hawthorne. Now this could be a family name, or who knows. But I made the mistake of searching twitter to see if there were any updates on this poor horse.
What I came across made me want to puke.
There is apparently a place in Sicily named Catania. Apparently, Catania is famous for horse meat. I saw people raving about how delicious their horse meat meals were. There were pictures of horse burgers, horse steaks, horse ribs, horse sausage… and someone mentioned that one of the horse meat butcher shops had horse heads in the window.
Again, naming this horse may have been innocent enough, but after the sick individuals I met in racing- I really feel this was probably an intentional naming.
This is one of the few times I’ve actually vomited while reading something on this site.
As vile as this is, it pales in comparison to the Yulin dog festival. (If you want to look it up, I suggest you keep a garbage can next to you – you’ll need it).
I’ve signed the petitions online. It’s unspeakable what is done to the dogs!!!!! What is done to the horses is horrible and tragic too!!!!!
And cats…..they torture cats during this “festival” too.
There are carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Horses are herbivores which could be translated to being vegan. I don’t know what goes on inside the people’s heads who exploit horses for racing, wagering handle, breeding and/or their meat; and I don’t feel that it is as much of a cruelty to taunt someone about their choice to be vegan by naming a horse VEGAN as this whole industry is an atrocity to horses. I am not assuming that they are having “fun” at the expense of activists against horseracing so much as they are having their sadistic fun at the expense of the horses by constantly, continually and repeatedly treating them with INHUMANE methods.
It’s not about us so much as it is about the horses and that the laws need to be changed to punish people who abuse horses and cause harm to horses.
I met Paul Reddam, briefly, out in California.
All of the following information I’m about to reveal I already knew about, but for neutrality and transparency I acquired the information from WIKI.
Like many racehorse owners he has a checkered past including owning a mortgage lending company DITECH that was subsequently sold to General Motors for millions.
Who was doing main business dealings with General Motors at that time?
Frank Stronach’s auto parts company – you guessed it.
CA Gov. Brown, at the time, characterized DITECH as actively engaging in “loan sharking” methods when collecting debts due to the thousands of complaints coming in from California residents who used the company.
Then 3 of his top managers for Ditech were subsequently indicted for extortion in 2000.
I guess they sent their goon squad over to horse racing at Woodbine where $345 million per year of Ontario taxpayers money, to this day, is unaccounted for with Stronach at the helm in one form or another.
He then owns CASHCALL who was successfully sued and settled for $5 million for “predatory lending.”
Now it’s called OWNING that specializes in loans in California.
His “go-to” trainer is Doug O’Neill and many of Reddam’s racehorses have died under suspicious circumstances that seem to be related to equine insurance policies.
What can I say?
This is horse racing and the poor racehorses don’t have a chance and imagine this?
Horse racing in California with people like this, and many more, want to gain control of MILLIONS in casino profits that would ensure this nefarious, vile, horse killing business has an endless amount of cash!
This business is rotten to the core and its the poor racehorses who pay every step of the way.
Thank you, Gina. I remember a comment on this blog about three years ago saying that Doug O’Neill was also known as Drug O’Needle due to the fact that he was known for excessive doping of race horses. He more or less gave it away (in my opinion) in an interview that I saw on television or in a video some years ago during a time that he was suspended from racing for doping violations. He didn’t say this out loud but it was obvious to me that he was thinking it loud enough, “Everybody does it.”
I got the feeling that someone had to be temporarily thrown out for a short period of time. It was like he was the designated pariah or scapegoat, so to speak, for that time period. I don’t think trainers at the world-class level can be at that level at all without excessive doping of the horses with pain-killing medications and performance enhancing drugs.
Mr. Reddam’s past in Canada goes back to standardbred/harness racing in Windsor Ontario.
It was called THE WINDSOR RACEWAY which was subsequently shut down because the criminal activity, corruption and for the $100 million in taxpayers money being handed over which rarely fulfilled its legal obligations to upgrade the dilapidated facilities.
Essentially, lots of the money given was unaccounted for and never followed-up by the Ontario government to find out where it went.
All of this into consideration Windsor residents were outraged and the never ending taxpayers cash flow was finally stopped.
Mr. Reddam disagreed with this decision and voiced it in the local newspaper and any pro-horse racing entity who financially benefited submitted comments like this: “It’s a sad day for harness racing fans in Windsor,” (June2, 2015 The Windsor Star), but where were those fans?
Nowhere to be found because the grandstands were empty and the younger generation indicated that they had no interest in this business at all.
The demolition of this racehorse hell hole begun and was completed in 2015 with horse racing still demanding government handouts.
Further research seems to indicate that Reddam was connected to such horse racing entities as Frank Stronach and Hill N Dale Equine Holdings who, to this day, services clients known as the “Windsor Boys Racing” who are involved with about 4 syndicates., which all seems to go back to The Windsor Raceway.
Where are they getting their millions to buy up racehorses?
Apparently some biotech companies out in California.
So to consider whether Reddam called one of his racehorses VEGAN intentionally or not?
Given this information, which is just the tip of the iceberg, I think we all know why.
The people who run horse racing and those who support it have no problem with animal abuse and murder & detest those who criticize this ‘sick sport’. The fact that this horse, used & abused for racing, with the name Vegan just shows that these same people are mean to animal activists as well. Washington Post editorial said it best- ““No other accepted sport exploits defenseless animals as gambling chips,” the editors wrote. “No other accepted sport tolerates the cruelties that routinely result in the injury and death of these magnificent animals. The rot in horse racing goes deep. It is a sport that has outlived its time.”