Equine Welfare - Change in the Racing Industry

This article is from the August 2020 Horse Deals magazine.

Last spring the situation could almost be described as chaotic, when prior to the popular racing carnival season, deeply disturbing footage was released of horses being trucked and handled inhumanely at knackeries. Understandably backlash was immediate, and the racing industry bore the brunt of the criticism. Unbeknownst to many, Racing Victoria already had in place a strategic plan to improve equine welfare in the sport. This strategic plan has since accelerated and expanded beyond the established and successful Off The Track Retrainer program.

The established Off The Track Retrainer program is a familiar aspect at Horse Deals — with Acknowledged Retrainers frequently advertising within the magazine — but this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Racing Victoria’s innovative initiatives. Horse Deals had the opportunity to speak to Jennifer Hughes, the General Manager of Equine Welfare, to explore how her team is leading the way.

Jen, what’s your experience in the racing industry and with horses? I’ve been with Racing Victoria for six years, and prior I was involved in British Racing for eight years. I completed my Bachelor and Masters in Equine Science and am in the process of a Masters of International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law. I’m a horse owner and rider myself, currently riding an off the track Thoroughbred.

What does the Equine Welfare Team do and why is it important? In summary, we facilitate programs that improve equine welfare before, during and after racing and by the time this spring arrives, we will have increased our team working exclusively on equine welfare from two to six people over the past 12 months.

We have the most jurisdiction during racing, as all of our powers and abilities are tied to the Rules of Racing. The people who are affected by the Rules of Racing are the licensed and registered people; jockeys, trainers, stablehands, and owners. Our capabilities are slightly reduced before racing because we need horses to be registered to fall under our jurisdiction. Post-racing, our abilities are diminished even further because general members of the public take on these horses and we have no say over what they do.

There are six pillars of our equine welfare plan…

1: Governance and Standards

We have just launched an Equine Welfare Advisory Council with four independent experts to help ensure we implement our strategic plan in the best manner possible.

Our focus has been on ensuring that we have a structure within our business that supports equine welfare. Basically asking where the gaps are and how can we fill them.

2. Population Dynamics and Traceability

It is imperative that we have full visibility on what horses are coming into the industry and how to trace them throughout. The key aspect of welfare is knowing what horses you’re looking for and where; you don’t know if there are welfare issues if you don’t know where the horses are. The Rules of Racing govern this from foal registration at 30 days old through to retirement from racing, but we have to be creative and rely on incentive-driven traceability post-racing. Within this pillar is a responsible and humane end of life.

3. Racing

This pillar is predominantly delivered by our veterinary team. It is focused on reducing risks in racing, for example research into reducing injuries and conducting pre-race veterinary inspections. This has led to the introduction of world-leading technology such as the Standing CT Scanner at the University of Melbourne’s U-Vet Equine Centre, designed to help in the early detection of limb injuries in horses.

4. Post Racing Outcomes

One of our big responsibilities as the Equine Welfare team is the pathway for racehorses following their time on the track. The six aims within the post-racing space are:

Successful transition: From careers on the track to new homes. This involves programs such as the Retrainer Program and the newly established RESET Program.

Demand: To keep off the track Thoroughbreds in demand across the state. We aid in this with sponsorship for competitions for those riding off the track horses and we also seek out new disciplines or areas that we could promote the breed.

Longevity in new homes: We want horses to have longevity with their new owners and this is an area that we are continually working on. Racehorses have been bred, fed and trained for one job prior to retraining and a new owner’s understanding of this is key to the success of off the track horses in their new homes. Our team will be expanding in the future to further our support and education for the off the track community. Over the coming year, COVID permitting, our sponsorships will be maintained and we will also include clinics for the wider community to encourage and support off the track owners. We are also planning to launch seminar-style education and a support network. We want riders to feel supported, rather than thinking a month in that they have a problem with their Thoroughbred that they can’t deal with. The aim is to offset those problems that come from a Thoroughbred failing in their new home from a misunderstanding or mismanagement.

Traceability: Improving traceability from birth to death.

Safety net: We are establishing a Short to Medium Term Care Program to provide a safety net if we find horses that are in a compromised welfare situation.

Humane end of life: Ensuring that if the best welfare outcome for a horse is euthanasia, that it is humanely treated. We are establishing an On-site Humane Euthanasia Program to facilitate this.

5. Industry Culture

We can only achieve these outlined goals if the industry comes along with us. A huge part of this is educating all in our industry and creating their aspiration for continuous improvement. The vast majority do great things, but everyone can always learn and strive to get better.

6. Reputation

This pillar is the role of our Communications Team, to tell the story of what we are doing for welfare, before, during and after racing.

Let’s chat about some of the programs you’ve outlined. Can you tell us how each program works and how it benefits Thoroughbred welfare?

The Retrainer Program

Although this program has been around for a while, it continues to evolve. We currently have over 50 retrainers across the state and we are always looking for more. The concept is that our retrainers source or purchase off the track Thoroughbreds themselves, retrain them and then sell them on to a new home. We support our retrainers by promoting them and their businesses and also offering Thoroughbred-specific webinars and education, such as information sessions on nutrition and bitting.

There is an application process to become a Racing Victoria Acknowledged Retrainer; they require references, are interviewed over the phone and finally there is a property inspection and riding assessment. What we want to see is that applicants have the experience and skills to retrain Thoroughbreds, as well as meeting our horse husbandry and welfare standards. Our Retrainers are across a broad range of disciplines, as we want to highlight the versatility of the breed — our leisure and therapy horse retrainers are just as important to us as our eventing, show and polo retrainers.

Our post-racing framework is based on the understanding that horses that come off the track are of varying standards; the A category horses are what we expect our Acknowledged Retrainers to be looking for; those horses that they can see market value in and will be able to rehome reasonably quickly (in one to two months). An example of an A category horse would be those that are sound, have good temperaments and move well and/or are appealing to the eye.

The RESET Program

Which brings us to our RESET (Racehorse, Evaluation, Support, Education and Transition) Program which is designed for those horses in the B category. There is nothing physically stopping a B category horse from having a successful life after racing, though these are the ones that are missing out on being picked up by our retrainers, because their expected sale price isn’t going to reflect the time and money invested into them. This might be due to an old scar on a hind leg, the horse isn’t that pretty, paces aren’t that flash or maybe it’s just a plain bay — but for whatever reason, they just aren’t flying off the shelves.

To help incentivise these horses, we are putting in place funding for their retraining with our Acknowledged Retrainers. How we identify these horses is that they are first nominated by either the owner, trainer, or occasionally the RSPCA. We then circulate the listed horses out to our Acknowledged Retrainers to see if anyone sees potential in them. If none of our retrainers pick up a particular horse, we take that as a sign that there is no market value for them and that is when they are eligible for the program. The horse will then have a veterinary assessment, and providing that the vet says they don’t see anything prohibiting their chance of having a second career, they then go into the program. We are currently running a pilot of this program now with up to 30 horses and around 12 retrainers taking part.

Short to Medium Term

Care Program

Our Short to Medium Term Care Program is catered for off the track Thoroughbreds that are, for some reason, found in a situation with compromised welfare; whether that be bushfires or an RSPCA neglect case. They are horses that need to be removed from wherever they are currently, to go to a safe place before we can plan a long term solution for them. It might be for a logistical reason that a long term solution cannot be found, it could be that it’s a malnourished horse that might need a month or two to get back to a suitable body weight. The aim is that we will have a network of people that we can get in touch with, that would be able to take on horses quickly and care for them in the short term while a long term decision is made. Our vision is that each horse’s care would be funded.

These horses, with time, could become category A or B horses that fit into our other programs, so the Short to Medium Term Care Program gives them that buffer time and an opportunity to find a career after racing.

Similarly to our Retrainer Program, the people that are part of this network would go through an application process. It’s hoped that when we can get this program up and running that some of our Acknowledged Retrainers will pilot the program since we already have such good relationships with them. Once it’s all up and running, maybe in six months’ time, we will have established carer’s standards and will open up the program to the wider community.

On-Site Humane

Euthanasia Program

We acknowledge that there are going to be occasions that humane euthanasia is the best welfare outcome for a horse — not just Thoroughbreds, but horses in general. In short, our aim is that if someone makes the decision that a horse is not going to live any longer, that they choose to have the horse euthanised at home, rather than put on a truck, live, to go to a knackery.

Essentially, we are not putting any judgement or assessment around when it is appropriate to euthanise a horse. What we are doing is, when someone has made that decision, we are enabling them to do it on-site when it may have otherwise been cost-prohibitive. The vision is that they will nominate via Racing Victoria, and we ask them to indicate why the horse is being euthanised. Not that horses would be rejected from the program based on that, but it’s more for us to understand what horses are being euthanised and why. We envisage that this program will be for horses that have retired five, six, seven years ago, not horses that are fresh off the track. It will be open to any Thoroughbred that has been domiciled in Victoria for the six months prior to nomination for the program.

The main goal that we are trying to achieve is to stop horses going live on a truck to a knackery. We have to ensure that this program is easily accessible and not turn away horses and risk them going on a truck to a knackery anyway — it’s a delicate balance.
In six months’ time, we hope to assess the information on what horses are being euthanised and why, to improve our programs further. If you think about the post-racing population as it currently stands, our team has minimal sight on the horses that are going to knackeries and limited control over it. Like many of our programs, traceability of horses is an additional benefit.

On-site euthanasia is definitely a difficult topic to talk about, especially with the community, but this is a really important step for horse welfare.

What would you like to see in five years’ time? I would love for traceability to be finessed; to have the facts and be able to show that Thoroughbred welfare is improving. With that, if we know which horses are not making a successful transition post-racing, we can develop programs to assist them.

As Jen has summed up so well, Racing Victoria is proving itself to be an industry leader in Thoroughbred welfare. The Welfare Team has the funding and support needed to launch programs that will progress the management of Thoroughbreds through every stage of racing.

It isn’t just Victoria that has Thoroughbred Welfare at the forefront, as Jen explained racing entities across Australia and New Zealand meet regularly to share ideas and programs that could benefit horse welfare across the board.

We will enthusiastically watch on as Racing Victoria’s Welfare Team continue to drive for evolution in what is such an intricate industry.

Photos: Brett Holburt – Racing Photos. Article: Rachel Clayfield.

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