Following in the footsteps of The Stronach Group’s much-ballyhooed “surgical intervention” program, this year HISA created one of its own – “The HISA Equine Recovery Foundation,” or HERF. HERF, says its website, “is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting Thoroughbred racehorses injured during racing and training, addressing a critical gap in equine welfare. HERF provides essential financial and logistical assistance to reduce fatalities resulting from recoverable racing-related injuries.”
Basically, HERF takes possession of injured horses who otherwise would have been euthanized, and then sends them to surgery and/or rehab. The goal, they say, is not a return to racing, just to save them from premature death. All sounds good, on paper. But this being the horseracing industry – an industry that has chewed up and spit out hundreds of thousands of horses over the years and now, because of that, faces an existential threat to its social license to operate – we are right to view HERF dubiously.
First, how many of those operated on will survive long-term? As most of you know, horses do not, as a rule, make good candidates for fracture repair. What do you suppose the odds are of HISA/HERF disclosing a laminitis death weeks or months after surgery?
But the problem actually starts before then, for you see the list of “successes” on HERF’s website is populated with names like “Quirky,” “Pie,” “Belly,” and “Guppy.” Why a problem? Those are second names – not their racing names. So, we can’t track them, which is just the way HISA wants it (remember, all deaths “reported” by HISA are also anonymous – mere numbers, no names). (For its part, HISA says the fake names are meant to protect owners from potential shaming.) Not only that, but where the horses were injured is similarly not disclosed. In short, take “good news” from HERF with a whole lot of salt.
Zero accountability befits this smokescreen program.
Why should the owners be protected from potential shaming? And honestly, given what goes on on a daily basis at racetracks, and how much is just right out there in the open for everyone to see, I dare say the owners don’t give half a rat’s ass what the public thinks or says. They’re policed and protected by their own corrupt system, and now they’ve added another superficial layer to their putrid propaganda screen. Tell HERF that the only ones buying into them and their “recovery foundation” are the apologists, and the ones who will actually benefit are not the poor horses, but the owners and trainers who will try to use them to hide more abuse and death from public scrutiny.