In an “Open Letter,” The Jockey Club has responded to Mike Repole’s threatened lawsuit. I won’t bore you with all the details, just the part about “aftercare.” On Repole’s claim that TJC “has failed to address aftercare,” they write:
“Aftercare is a shared industry responsibility. The Jockey Club has performed its role dutifully, and it is wrong to assert that it has ignored aftercare or that ‘nothing has changed.’ The Jockey Club is the single largest funder of aftercare – contributing $2.5 million this year and $23 million over the past 15 years – and is a founding member of Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.”
First, let’s get this out of the way: The Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance is a vile organization – a mere marketing arm of the industry that in essence says, if you want our money (for, mind you, saving spent racehorses from slaughter or starvation), you must agree to only speak of racing in a good light. Basically, a gag order.
(If you are unfamiliar with TAA, read this, and this, and this.)
More to the point, though, are TJC’s numbers. They claim – boast, really – that they, “the single largest funder of aftercare,” contributed $2.5M to aftercare in 2025 and $23M over the past 15 years – or about $1.5M per year. If not for the deadly seriousness of it all, ‘twould be laughable.
Over the past few years, the U.S. “foal crop” (a telling term if ever there was one) has been around 17,000. Using decidedly conservative figures of an average 5-year “career,” 25-year lifespan, and annual cost-of-care of $5,000 means that in order for the U.S. racing industry to guarantee a lifetime safe-landing for each and every member of this year’s “crop” (less the ones who die in action, of course) it would have to come up with some $1.6 billion. That’s billion with a “b.” And again, that’s just for this year’s “crop” of Thoroughbreds (yes, we’re only talking Thoroughbreds here). The same would be needed next year, and the year after that, and so on.
In short, folks, the American horseracing industry is deliberately creating thousands of horses every year for which it has neither the desire nor the ability to care for post-exploitation. Hence, slaughter. And The Jockey Club full well knows it.
The American Quarter Horse Association boasted about the large numbers of new FOAL registrations in one year each year for several years. ‘The Western Horseman’ magazine had an “Annual All-Breed” issue published every October for several years. I forgot which year it was, but in a 1970-something or 1980-something article about Quarter Horses, the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) bragged about having something like 234,000 new FOAL registrations in one year.
They’re not all racehorses, of course, but a lot of them are running-bred Quarter Horses.
Some people have this attitude and belief that if a horse is not used for its meat, its going to waste. The AQHA was, and still is as far as I know, PRO-SLAUGHTER however revolting that is in the nitty gritty reality of everyday life. The whole equine industry as a whole produces and exploits horses for whatever financial gain there might be and changing that whole life cycle, if you will, is an uphill climb.
The Jockey Club’s statement is classic misdirection. Quote a few million dollars, wrap it in “shared responsibility” language, and hope nobody does the arithmetic. Thank you, Patrick. When you actually do, their claims collapse. An industry that produces ~17,000 Thoroughbreds a year and uses them up in a few seasons is incurring a lifetime obligation measured in billions, not in single-digit millions. Against that reality, $1–2 million a year isn’t “leadership” or “the single largest funder” in any morally meaningful sense. It’s PR money. You’re also right about the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance. It functions far more like a reputational laundering mechanism than a solution. To condition funding on not criticizing the industry is a gag order where a small number of horses become marketing props for “we care” campaigns. The industry is knowingly overproducing animals with no fully funded plan for their full lifespan. Slaughter and neglect aren’t “unfortunate side effects.” They are predictable, built-in outcomes of a business model that externalizes end-of-life costs. The Jockey Club absolutely knows this. The numbers have always made that unavoidable. So when they say “aftercare is a shared responsibility,” what they really mean is “no one is actually on the hook for the real bill.” As long as that remains true, the pipeline to slaughter is not an accident. It’s part of the system.
Sewer Rats v. Sewer Rats
As far as I know the Jockey Club was pro-slaughter for years, decades, centuries. Even though there was supposedly a rule made to make it more or less socially unacceptable within the industry of racehorse disposal to sell unprofitable and unwanted horses to kill buyers and meat packers, it is an ongoing practice to do what they have always done except maybe be a lot more sneaky about it.
Certain individuals within the racing industry are more sneaky about it. I can’t imagine the methods used to REMOVE LIP TATTOOS from the Thoroughbreds. I can’t imagine how painful it would be for the horses to be subject to that additional torture. I have no doubts at all that there are racing industry insiders who have friends and associates who deal in horse flesh of all kinds and that includes order buyers, the kill buyers who buy horses to fill a contract with the meat-packers in Mexico, Canada, and other foreign countries.
It sickens me that Mike Repole spends millions of dollars on Thoroughbreds at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales and other such sales and be all full of himself about his being directly involved in the Grade I races, but he DOES NOT spend millions of dollars to have a sanctuary for endangered racehorses himself.