Some of you may already know that Tripadvisor now attaches the following to search results for American racetracks: “This business does not currently meet Tripadvisor’s Animal Welfare Policy.” This applies equally to the cheap tracks and the heavy hitters like Churchill (here), Saratoga (here), and Del Mar (here). This, folks, is the definition of moral progress. Here is Tripadvisor’s entire “Welfare Policy,” and its racing-specific section:
“Tripadvisor will not allow ticket sales via its platform for, and will not generate booking revenue from, specific experiences where domesticated animals are put at heightened risk of injury or death for the sake of sport or entertainment. This means Tripadvisor does not enable booking for experiences that involve animal racing, such as most dog, horse, and camel racing, or for rodeo-style events, where the format of the activity typically creates these risks.”
As you can imagine, the racing industry is not happy, with the British Horseracing Authority calling the move “surprising and troubling.” (Tripadvisor’s policy extends globally.) But here is what Jon Stettin, a lifelong bettor, says in Past The Wire:
“Before racing gets too angry with Tripadvisor, however, perhaps we should ask a more uncomfortable question. Why did Tripadvisor believe it could say this in the first place, and why will plenty of people outside horse racing read that warning and think they have a point?
“If racing in the U.S. thinks PETA and Horse Racing Wrongs are the only people who feel this way, newsflash: they aren’t. This isn’t PETA putting a warning on Saratoga’s page. It isn’t Horse Racing Wrongs doing it. It is Tripadvisor, one of the largest travel platforms in the world. Racing can call that unfair. … What racing cannot afford to do is dismiss every outside criticism as coming from people who don’t understand the game. Eventually enough people who don’t understand your game can determine whether your game maintains its social license to exist. I have personally struggled with this issue since I was a kid. I saw my first catastrophic breakdown more than half a century ago and I remember it. I remember plenty of others since.”
And while Stettin still believes some horses “thrive on competition,” he acknowledges: “But let’s stop pretending every horse loves everything we ask it to do every day. They don’t. Horses can be sore. They can have issues better served by rest. They can be frightened. They can have physical problems that aren’t obvious to somebody standing along the rail.”
Then this: “We should also consider how racing handles a catastrophic injury when one happens in front of the public. A horse goes down. The screen goes up. The horse ambulance arrives. Sometimes the horse walks into it. Sometimes the outcome is far worse. The announcer appropriately becomes solemn [note: this mostly is not true], there is an uncomfortable period of silence, and before long racing produces its own rendition of ‘the show must go on.’ The horses for the next race come onto the track, the betting pools open and everybody moves forward. … There are humane reasons for putting up the screen. … But put yourself in the shoes of somebody seeing it for the first time. A horse may just have died in front of them, and minutes later we’re discussing the Pick 4. Then imagine telling that person breakdowns are simply inherent to the game. Is it really difficult to understand why that answer doesn’t work outside our walls?”
And: “Then there is what happens after racing, an issue this industry still prefers to compartmentalize. We have documented the slaughter pipeline on these pages before. We have also documented how The Jockey Club’s own Rule Book could be changed to require far greater transfer-of-ownership accountability after horses leave racing. Instead, we get announcements about optional traceability initiatives and they are heralded as progress. Any progress is better than none, but let’s not confuse an optional program with closing the pipeline. If the mechanism remains optional, the horse still has the option of disappearing. That isn’t closing the pipeline. It is a card trick.”
In summary, he writes:
“Tripadvisor didn’t invent breakdowns. Tripadvisor didn’t create kill pens. Tripadvisor didn’t create medication violations, sore horses, economic pressures or racing’s historic tendency to circle the wagons when outsiders criticize us. Tripadvisor put a warning label on something racing has been struggling with since long before Tripadvisor existed.”
Hear, hear. And thank you, Tripadvisor. The times indeed are a-changin’.
How did Trip Advisor come to have an animal welfare policy? Was it external pressure from customers or a choice strictly driven by some conscience within the company? If their policies are driven by external/customer demands, can other companies connected with racing be pressured by customers into severing ties?
With enough public pressure, at some point a company should come to the conclusion that it is in its economic interests to end the relationship with racing.
I’m not sure how much immediate economic damage this does to racing but the social awareness it creates for the animal welfare community is golden, and hopefully starts more discussion among the uninformed public. With enough pressure other companies might follow suit.
Margaret, within the post I put links for the Welfare Policy in general and the warning attached to specific tracks (Churchill, Saratoga, Del Mar).
Where on trip advisor is the warning posted?
Thank you, Ronda. Keep up your tenancious activism.
This is real progress! Thanks for keeping us informed and keeping us going! I wrote a play about horseracing and submitted it to the local playwright festival in Baltimore, where I have had many of my plays produced over the years. It was not selected for a staged reading because two of the evaluators objected to presenting a one-sided view of horseracing and felt it would offend people who support horseracing. They also said they don’t think most people will want to see this on stage. Two other evaluators wanted it to have a staged reading, but all 4 evaluators have to agree so it wasn’t selected. If anyone wants to read my play, just send me a note with your email address and I will send it. It probably needs some revision work, it’s the original draft, but still available to anyone who wants to read it. My email address is rondacooperstein@hotmail.com
This is significant and long overdue. Tripadvisor is recognizing what the horseracing industry has spent decades trying to obscure: when an activity puts animals at heightened risk of catastrophic injury or death simply for human entertainment, it should not be promoted or financially supported as a tourist attraction.
Taking racing and rodeo-style events off its booking platform means Tripadvisor is no longer willing to profit from these activities. That sends a powerful message to the public and, hopefully, to other companies in the travel and entertainment industries. The tide is turning. The more businesses that refuse to monetize animal suffering, the harder it becomes for an industry built around it to portray itself as harmless entertainment.
My belief is that all (or at least most) children have a sense of right and wrong but as they grow up they learn to ignore their conscience to get along with their social circle, etc.
My perception is that this Jon Stettin has known all of his life, just as many, many other people have known all of their lives, that forcing young horses to be race horses is cruel and inhumane. But I am assuming that he was pushed along by his social circle to ignore the hardcore reality of fatal injuries to horses caused by the barbaric mistreatment of horses for gambling purposes.
When people use the excuse that, if you criticize them for something especially abusing their animal(s), that you don’t understand, it’s because they have no intention of changing their abusive behaviors against their animal(s).
It’s awesome that Tripadvisor has established this new policy to recognize the inherent cruelty to horses that often leads to fatalities in racehorses!
It is so appropriate for a company that does business world-wide to recognize that the horse racing industry is not worthy of being put on a pedestal and heralded as above the law when it comes to abusing horses for “sport” and eventually killing so many thousands of horses.