In an LTE to the Paulick Report, Kyle Rothfus, founder of a rescue nonprofit (and also a breeder/owner) writes:
“The recent discovery of two dozen Thoroughbred broodmares in a Texas kill pen has sparked a familiar response. Advocates are identifying horses, rescues are searching for placement options, donors are opening their wallets, and social media is busy trying to determine who should be blamed. Meanwhile, the question that matters most remains largely unanswered: how did this happen?”
He goes on: “[W]hen Thoroughbreds surface in kill pens, the investigation is often left to private citizens, advocates, rescues, and volunteers who are trying to piece together information on their own.
“Too often, the industry mobilizes resources only after horses are standing in a kill pen. … We cannot continue operating in a reactive model.
“What the industry needs is not another round of social media outrage. What it needs is a commitment to finding answers. Because every Thoroughbred that ends up in a kill pen represents more than a horse in danger. It represents a failure we did not fully understand, a lesson we did not fully learn, and another opportunity for our critics to argue that we are unwilling to police ourselves.
“Until we start treating these incidents as systemic failures worthy of investigation and correction, we should not be surprised when they continue to happen. And every time they do, we hand our critics another bullet in the gun aimed at taking down the entire Thoroughbred industry.”
My question: How many of these horseracing-must-do-better pieces do we have to read? This has been going on for decades; hundreds of thousands of industry throwaways have been violently and brutally butchered. And still they haven’t figured it out? That alone should be enough for our 21st Century society to say, no more; horseracing has to go.
This acknowledgement by Kyle Rothfus, an industry insider, that the racing industry is failing to police itself is sort of a clog in the drain for a lack of a better choice of words. As you pointed out, this steady flow of horses from the racing industry to the slaughter pipeline and literally to the slaughterhouses is and has been ongoing for years and years.
By “clog in the drain” I mean that someone inside the industry noticed 24 broodmares in a kill pen which is more than the usual number of horses going through just one horse dealers’ business in a day or a week that I have seen online.
It’s very telling that it takes a person inside the industry to write a letter to the editor of a racing industry publication to call attention to their blatant failures to “police” themselves.
Imagine the people in this industry with earnings of over Ten-Million Dollars a year who would rather be known for getting their pictures taken inside of a cockfighting ring in Puerto Rico and how much they care about what happens to racehorses after the industry has exploited them for racing and breeding. How much money did the Ortiz brothers donate to a bona fide racehorse rescue??? How much money would it take to save the Jockey Club registered horses being sold to kill buyers???
I expect the Breeders’ Sales auctions and the Paulick Report to continue to boast about the high selling young horses in the future as if no billionaire race horse owner in this despicable industry cares about what happens to old broodmares.
The racing industry is so wrapped up in its own propaganda regarding its dependence on slaughterhouses that it still believes if it clutches its pearls and feigns ignorance, people will continue to believe it’s in no way culpable for the brutal butchering of thousands of sentient beings.