WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:05.200 Horse racing is all about the thrill. It’s about the speed, the rush, the adrenaline, 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:10.570 the challenge, the sound of hooves pounding the track, the sight of extreme physical exertion, 00:00:10.570 --> 00:00:15.849 the pushing of boundaries human and horse alike. And more than anything else, 00:00:15.849 --> 00:00:17.429 it’s about the money. 00:00:21.700 --> 00:00:26.340 Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. Above all else, horse 00:00:26.340 --> 00:00:30.800 racing is a business and a multi-billion dollar one at that. It’s not for the love of the 00:00:30.800 --> 00:00:36.210 sport and certainly not for the love of the horse, it’s for the love of money. This 00:00:36.210 --> 00:00:41.100 video is the third in my series on horse ethics. In the first, we looked at horse riding in 00:00:41.100 --> 00:00:45.470 general and the musculoskeletal damage that it causes and in the second took a closer 00:00:45.470 --> 00:00:49.190 look at the effects of the bit in particular. Now, not everyone can agree on the ethical 00:00:49.190 --> 00:00:54.210 nature of horse riding itself, including many vegans. But horse racing takes the commodification 00:00:54.210 --> 00:00:59.120 of horses to a whole other level that should even give the most staunch non-vegan pause. 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:04.010 With money as the priority, horses are treated as no more than cash machines. This so-called 00:01:04.010 --> 00:01:08.650 sport is rife with cruelty on so many levels and I’ll do my best to touch on as many 00:01:08.650 --> 00:01:12.800 of them as possible. Please reference the blog post for this video linked here and in 00:01:12.800 --> 00:01:17.010 the video description for further articles and resources. The cruelty of horse racing 00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:21.690 begins long before the track. Racehorses are genetically manipulated and bred to run as 00:01:21.690 --> 00:01:26.280 fast as possible. Their lives begin at a stud farm where mother horses are forced to be 00:01:26.280 --> 00:01:30.570 pregnant 90% of their shortened lives through the use of drugs like prostaglandins and the 00:01:30.570 --> 00:01:34.950 alteration of their environment in order to manipulate their natural cycles. Once born, 00:01:34.950 --> 00:01:38.890 potential racehorses are ripped from their mothers, who are immediately impregnated again 00:01:38.890 --> 00:01:42.810 until they can no longer produce foals and are sent to slaughter. Having been separated 00:01:42.810 --> 00:01:47.070 from their mothers, these newborn foals need sustenance and are nurse by what are called 00:01:47.070 --> 00:01:51.830 “nurse mares”- horses with lower pedigrees who are impregnated simply to produce milk 00:01:51.830 --> 00:01:56.260 for the racehorse foals. The children of the nurse mares are of no use to the industry 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:00.640 and because it’s illegal to send horses under six months to slaughter, many are killed 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:04.750 by a brutal clubbing or are simply left to starve to death. They are then skinned to 00:02:04.750 --> 00:02:09.050 produce high-end leather products, known as cordovan leather, and their meat often sold 00:02:09.050 --> 00:02:13.060 for human consumption. A 2009 report from The Jockey Club stated that approximately 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:20.060 49,817 mares were bred that year, meaning approximately 49,817 by-product nurse foals 00:02:21.260 --> 00:02:25.560 were needlessly slaughtered. And that’s only in the United States. This horrific cycle 00:02:25.560 --> 00:02:30.060 of forced pregnancies, stolen children and premature death closely mirrors the dairy 00:02:30.060 --> 00:02:34.640 industry, wherein mother cows have their calves taken at birth and slaughtered for veal so 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:36.760 that humans may consume their milk. 00:02:36.760 --> 00:02:41.030 Unfortunately, being bred as a potential racehorse does not save the other foals from a similar 00:02:41.030 --> 00:02:45.209 fate. Out of the hundreds of thousands of potential racehorses bred in multiple countries 00:02:45.209 --> 00:02:50.470 every year, only 5-40% will go on to race. The remainder are either sent to slaughter 00:02:50.470 --> 00:02:56.000 for human consumption or pet food, re-entered into the breeding industry, or sold for lower-tier 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:59.970 racing, which has even less safeguards and regulations. While the consumption of horse 00:02:59.970 --> 00:03:04.360 meat is taboo in many societies with even regular consumers of other animal products 00:03:04.360 --> 00:03:08.560 balking at the idea of eating horses, what many people don’t realize is that horse 00:03:08.560 --> 00:03:13.410 slaughter is simply the back-end of horse racing. Just as the egg industry has no use 00:03:13.410 --> 00:03:17.980 for male chicks and grinds them up alive or gasses them, so too are the horses not deemed 00:03:17.980 --> 00:03:20.920 fit enough for racing discarded as industry waste. 00:03:20.920 --> 00:03:25.300 For those horses who do make the cut to race, it’s just the beginning of a tortured existence. 00:03:25.300 --> 00:03:29.849 Race horses typically begin rigorous training when they are around 1.5 years old, long before 00:03:29.849 --> 00:03:33.910 their bodies are fully developed and their skeletons mature. According to the text Practical 00:03:33.910 --> 00:03:37.670 Anatomy and Propaedeutic of the Horse, the length of time for complete growth of the 00:03:37.670 --> 00:03:42.879 epiphyseal plates, or cartilage, is not until they are (on average) between 6 and 9 years 00:03:42.879 --> 00:03:47.530 old. The extreme training demands put on these vulnerable young horses leads to a tragic 00:03:47.530 --> 00:03:52.550 preponderance of fractures and breakdowns, leaving them finished by the age of 4-6. This 00:03:52.550 --> 00:03:56.599 footage of a young filly in a speed trial shows the audible crack [loud crack] of her 00:03:56.599 --> 00:04:00.959 cannon bone as her body is pushed beyond its natural limits. These injuries, more often 00:04:00.959 --> 00:04:05.319 than not, seal a horse’s fate as they are deemed to expensive and troublesome to treat. 00:04:05.319 --> 00:04:10.470 On average 24 horses die per week on racetracks across the United states, with numbers in 00:04:10.470 --> 00:04:17.470 Australia as high as 68/day or 25,000 a year. The injuries aren’t all external breaks- 00:04:17.659 --> 00:04:22.529 the demands of racing cause a large proportion of horses to bleed into their lungs and windpipe, 00:04:22.529 --> 00:04:27.169 called Exercise-Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage, with a University of Melbourne study finding 00:04:27.169 --> 00:04:32.270 that 50% of race horses had blood in their windpipe and 90% have blood deeper in the 00:04:32.270 --> 00:04:36.830 lungs. Their high concentrate diets of grains also leads to gastric ulcers with a study 00:04:36.830 --> 00:04:41.339 in the Veterinarian finding them present in 89% of horses with many of them developing 00:04:41.339 --> 00:04:45.389 deep, bleeding ulcers just within 8 weeks of the commencement of their training. 00:04:45.389 --> 00:04:50.249 When not tossed aside as too expensive to treat, injured horses are pushed to keep racing 00:04:50.249 --> 00:04:55.159 with the aid of dangerous drugs. Pain medication can mask injury, allowing wounded horse to 00:04:55.159 --> 00:04:59.909 run harder, further endangering their lives- as many as 90% of horses that break down have 00:04:59.909 --> 00:05:04.599 pre-existing injuries. Journalist Max Watman explains that because “thoroughbreds are 00:05:04.599 --> 00:05:08.460 bred for flashy speed and to look good in the sales ring … the animal itself has become 00:05:08.460 --> 00:05:12.409 more fragile” and that “to keep the horses going,” they’re all given Lasix (which 00:05:12.409 --> 00:05:16.860 controls bleeding in the lungs), phenylbutazone (an anti-inflammatory), and corticosteroids 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:20.659 (for pain and inflammation). Injured horses aren’t the only ones drugged, however. Former 00:05:20.659 --> 00:05:25.110 public relations manager for Churchill downs Alex Straus says, “There are trainers pumping 00:05:25.110 --> 00:05:29.240 horses full of illegal drugs every day. With so much money on the line, people will do 00:05:29.240 --> 00:05:33.650 anything to make their horses run faster.” This includes chemicals that are made to bulk 00:05:33.650 --> 00:05:38.610 up pigs and cattle before slaughter, as well as blood doping agents, thyroid medications, 00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:43.559 stimulants, Viagra, cobra venom, and cancer drugs, among others. 00:05:43.559 --> 00:05:47.499 In addition to being chemically pushed to perform, horses are brutally whipped during 00:05:47.499 --> 00:05:52.699 races in what is probably the most public and societally endorsed form of animal abuse 00:05:52.699 --> 00:05:57.389 today. The racing industry assures that whips must be padded and when used properly only 00:05:57.389 --> 00:06:02.409 stimulate a horse, not cause pain. However, according to a study by professor and veterinarian 00:06:02.409 --> 00:06:08.520 Dr. Paul McGreevy, the padding failed to protect horses in 64% of strikes and 83% of whip impacts 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:13.169 showed visible indentation of the skin, with some 75% of strikes hitting the horse’s 00:06:13.169 --> 00:06:17.210 flank even though that’s against the International Agreement On Breeding, Racing, and Wagering. 00:06:17.210 --> 00:06:21.979 Dr. McGreevy also found that 70% of strikes were delivered “backhand” and were thus 00:06:21.979 --> 00:06:25.919 not counted under the rules limiting the number of strikes. In many countries, the number 00:06:25.919 --> 00:06:30.669 of times a horse may be struck during a race is only limited up till the last 100 meters, 00:06:30.669 --> 00:06:35.300 at which point horses may be whipped ceaselessly. This piece of ballistic plastic consistent 00:06:35.300 --> 00:06:40.330 with a horse’s flesh, shows the impact of a standard single whip strike. Dr. McGreevy 00:06:40.330 --> 00:06:45.029 himself took this further and did a thermograhpic study of his own leg after delivering a standard 00:06:45.029 --> 00:06:50.139 blow to his thigh. These white areas show inflammation 30 minutes after the single blow. 00:06:50.139 --> 00:06:54.259 Whip proponents argue that horses are much larger animals and have thicker skin and a 00:06:54.259 --> 00:06:58.349 higher pain tolerance. There is nothing to support this claim and McGreevy points out 00:06:58.349 --> 00:07:03.139 that horses can feel even a single fly landing on their skin as evidenced by the characteristic 00:07:03.139 --> 00:07:07.219 shake called the “manniculus reflex.” It is rather naïve to assume being beaten 00:07:07.219 --> 00:07:12.110 repeatedly with a blunt object is a pain free experience. Racehorses are also subjected 00:07:12.110 --> 00:07:16.399 to the use of metal bits, the impact of which I’ve extensively detailed in this video. 00:07:16.399 --> 00:07:20.659 It’s important to note, however, that the bits used in racing are even more severe than 00:07:20.659 --> 00:07:25.179 those used for equine sports. Horse whisperer Frank Bell states that, “Racehorses have 00:07:25.179 --> 00:07:28.779 bits in their mouths pretty much their whole lives... A lot of jockeys actually balance 00:07:28.779 --> 00:07:31.849 on the horse’s mouth so often [its mouth is] destroyed...” 00:07:31.849 --> 00:07:35.550 When off the track, horses in training are stabled for the majority of the day. This 00:07:35.550 --> 00:07:39.599 is the most practical way to “store” a horse, however, this isolation robs them of 00:07:39.599 --> 00:07:43.719 social and environmental stimulation. Stabled horses can developed a number of neurotic 00:07:43.719 --> 00:07:48.119 behaviors such as crib-biting, where they bite on fences and other fixed objects, as 00:07:48.119 --> 00:07:50.830 well as swaying back and forth and self mutilation. 00:07:50.830 --> 00:07:54.449 After all of this pain and suffering, you’d think that racehorses would be rewarded in 00:07:54.449 --> 00:07:59.389 the end, especially the champions. But these animals are treated as disposable commodities, 00:07:59.389 --> 00:08:03.089 regardless of their achievements. When a horse is no longer able to perform or his or her 00:08:03.089 --> 00:08:07.990 performance is no longer deemed adequate, he or she tossed aside like so much garbage. 00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:12.110 Those who break down on the track are euthanized on the spot and sent off to rendering plants 00:08:12.110 --> 00:08:16.689 for pet food and byproducts or simply dumped in a junkyard like this horse. Those who don’t 00:08:16.689 --> 00:08:20.860 die or are killed on the track are sometimes downgraded to lower-level racing, like jumps 00:08:20.860 --> 00:08:26.550 racing, which caries up to 20 times more fatalities than flat racing and has far less regulations 00:08:26.550 --> 00:08:31.099 and standards. The final destination for most failed racing horses is slaughter, where captive 00:08:31.099 --> 00:08:35.549 bolts are often sloppily and ineffectively used, prolonging the painful and terrifying 00:08:35.549 --> 00:08:40.179 death of these long-abused animals. Even champions who won their owners hundreds of thousands 00:08:40.179 --> 00:08:42.299 of dollars are sold for a pittance. 00:08:42.299 --> 00:08:47.590 From cradle to grave, racehorses live tortured, terrifying, brutal, and completely thankless 00:08:47.590 --> 00:08:51.680 lives. This is what happens when money is placed above the lives of sentient beings. 00:08:51.680 --> 00:08:55.410 And this is the true face of the so-called “Sport of Kings.” 00:08:55.410 --> 00:08:59.260 Thank you for watching and please share this video around to spread the message. Give it 00:08:59.260 --> 00:09:03.080 a thumbs up if you found it effective and to support messages like this one, click on 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:08.510 the Nugget Army icon and join our community on Patreon to keep Bite Size Vegan educating. 00:09:08.510 --> 00:09:12.220 If you’re new here, be sure to hit the big red subscribe button down there for more awesome 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:16.570 vegan content every Monday, Wednesday and some Fridays. And be sure to check out the 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:21.150 first and second video in the horse ethics series. Now go live vegan and I’ll see you 00:09:21.150 --> 00:09:21.400 soon!