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.
Exactly, Steve.
The industry is forever looking for ways to convince the public that the injury and mortality issues that are part and parcel of their “game” are being fixed and that now everything will be ok. If we are just ingenious enough there must be some way to ensure happy, healthy racehorses, right? No. There is no fixing it. HISA, HERF, etc. all you want, there is no remedy short of abolishing it.
I want to know the names the horses ran under, not just their stall names.
If HERF, or anyone involved in racing says they want to make the “sport” more humane, they need to limit the number of horses bred every year, to decrease the number of foals flooding the market. Too many end up going to slaughter without ever even having been ridden, even for pleasure. There needs to be a limited number of stallions at stud, and a limited number of mates bred. Put horses’ names into a lottery, irregardless of pedigree or racing history. Pick only a set number who will breed. If a mare does not become pregnant, miscarries, or if a foal doesn’t survive to start training, that will still count as a breeding for that year.
Make it illegal to send to slaughter any horse not chosen to be bred. Follow up on any horse living on a farm, any mare not pregnant, any stallion not in the breeding shed. Make sure they are alive and well.
Until the population of racehorses declines through a breeding lottery, every horse of breeding age needs to be accounted for.
Horses shouldn’t be raced until they are physically mature, we all know that. They will be less prone to breakdowns. They will be more mature intellectually and emotionally. They’ll be adult horses, not kids.
Limit the size of fields. Look at races with huge fields of 15 or more horses. Look at all the bumping, whether inadvertent or not , caused either by a horse who is inexperienced and just wants to go as it’s been trained, or a jockey trying to intimidate another horse into dropping back. How often do horses fall in a large field as opposed to in a field of, say, 7 or less horses? How many other horses need to be euthanized on the track because they got body slammed, forced into the rail, or clipped heels? It’s bad enough too many are raced with injuries, or weakened joints that cause breakdowns. That more jockeys aren’t killed every year, let alone suffer fractures and paralyzing injuries, is amazing. You’d think the government would’ve banned racing on the danger to the riders alone.
If the above can’t be implemented, just ban racing altogether. It’s a dead industry anyway. Just. Ban. Racing.
Q. Is HERF going to reach out to the low-tier trainers such as the one so depraved that he willfully neglected to provide proper care of a horse suffering with colic, and the trainer was/is such a low-life that he leaves the horse to suffer for something like 3 days before the horse dies in excruciating pain??? This was with other people offering to help him get the horse to a veterinarian in some half-ass way because the veterinarian who could have and should have attended to the horse with colic was too busy and had left the physical location of the particular racetrack.
This morally depraved trainer had refused all offers of help, no matter how genuine or not, to get the horse attended to by a different veterinarian not located on or near the racetrack.
***Imagine an industry “so concerned” about the WELFARE OF HORSES that they don’t even have an attending veterinarian physically available for extreme cases of colic or other emergencies; NO licensed Doctor of Veterinary Medicine on duty at the racetrack when one is needed.***
HISA was not formed to stop the abuse of horses exploited for racing. The same is true of HERF. It’s a public relations stunt to prolong the ongoing abuse of horses as gambling chips; to dupe a gullible public; to provide a way out, a cover-up for all guilty parties and gives the politicians something to crow about and also hide behind.
If HERF is truly about saving horses rather than rehabilitating racing’s image, then let the outcomes be independently tracked. Publish the horses’ identities, injuries, treatments, complications, deaths, and long-term placements. Otherwise, a list of anonymous “successes” is not accountability. It is public relations. The use of cute second names like “Quirky,” “Pie,” “Belly,” and “Guppy” makes these horses virtually impossible to track. Their racing identities aren’t provided. Their injury locations aren’t disclosed. Their subsequent deaths aren’t readily traceable. That isn’t transparency; it’s a system designed to prevent accountability. If HERF has nothing to hide, then it should have nothing to fear from independent scrutiny. Give every horse a traceable identity. Disclose the injury, treatment, complications, eventual outcome, and cause of death when applicable. Until then, HERF’s “successes” should be regarded as marketing claims, not evidence that the racing industry has suddenly learned to put horses before its own survival.
To say “…addressing a critical gap in equine welfare…” is such a complete load of crapola!
This is a non-profit organization to provide an off-ramp for the morally depraved people in this morally depraved industry to make it more profitable for these heartlessly cruel people to ruthlessly exploit horses AND to dupe the public, if, in fact, there are still extremely unaware and uninformed people left who can be duped.
This organization is a cruel and heartless joke for an industry that routinely abuses and neglects horses and calls it their “livelihood” when in fact many of the owners in horseracing are so filthy rich that using and abusing horses is more like a recreational sideline and a tax write-off.
This is just another extension of an industry so corrupt that they make a business out of abusing horses for money and tax write-offs. It’s like the art and science of abusing the hell out of horses until they’re dead and then blowing smoke. That’s why they need a public relations department and this b******* is just part of the public relations department.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority has always been about NOT DISCLOSING THE FACTS to the public about the names of horses killed at the various racetracks. That’s why HISA has been referred to as the DEAD-HORSE-HIDING group.
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.