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Four horses have now died in this year's festival, making a total of 82 since 2000. In the first 6 months of 2025 alone, 100 horses died in UK racing events. Surely this is unacceptable? Nothing wrong in my mind in horse events per se but this level of deaths in this day and age has got to be wrong.
Like the higher levels of football, there is an awful lot of money in horse racing but forget all the the nice girly horse/ pony myths where horses are treated lovingly as these animals are little more than chattel and if they don't make the grade are ruthlessly discarded. Even those that make vast sums of money for their owners very rarely get to spend their retirements in pasture once their usefulness expires. The FSA reported that the first 6 months of 2025 saw 317 horses from the racing industry sent to slaughter, 186 of which were only 5 years old or younger.
I personally have known some who have worked at Newmarket in the past who witnessed a culture of mistreatment of the animals but had been too scared to report it. Despite some subsequent bad publicity, the industry doesn't seem to have learnt too many lessons and in the first 6 months of 2025 there were 267 breaches of whip regulations which might indicate how the animals are being treated when they aren't actually racing.
Of course, horses are very expensive to keep and I understand that those bred to race that subsequently fail to make the grade then become a financial liability but they are very sentient animals and surely deserve better.
It's a fact of life that humans breed animals, mostly either to work them or eat them but also-more contentiously perhaps-for sport. My point is that in all cases there is surely no excuse for cruelty or unnecessary mistreatment of them. I personally disagree with breeding pheasants just to shoot them and satisfy a kind of blood lust (if it's merely about skill why not clay-pigeon shoot instead?) but at least their end is generally quick and some of them end up on the table. Horse racing is rather different as the animals themselves are more sentiment and they are too often exposed to unnecessary risks just for the enjoyment of the spectators and the thrill of gambling and the money to be made from it. The number of horses injured in racing events that have had to be put down as a result just seems far too high to me and begs the question of why courses cannot be made safer.
Like the higher levels of football, there is an awful lot of money in horse racing but forget all the the nice girly horse/ pony myths where horses are treated lovingly as these animals are little more than chattel and if they don't make the grade are ruthlessly discarded. Even those that make vast sums of money for their owners very rarely get to spend their retirements in pasture once their usefulness expires. The FSA reported that the first 6 months of 2025 saw 317 horses from the racing industry sent to slaughter, 186 of which were only 5 years old or younger.
I personally have known some who have worked at Newmarket in the past who witnessed a culture of mistreatment of the animals but had been too scared to report it. Despite some subsequent bad publicity, the industry doesn't seem to have learnt too many lessons and in the first 6 months of 2025 there were 267 breaches of whip regulations which might indicate how the animals are being treated when they aren't actually racing.
Of course, horses are very expensive to keep and I understand that those bred to race that subsequently fail to make the grade then become a financial liability but they are very sentient animals and surely deserve better.
It's a fact of life that humans breed animals, mostly either to work them or eat them but also-more contentiously perhaps-for sport. My point is that in all cases there is surely no excuse for cruelty or unnecessary mistreatment of them. I personally disagree with breeding pheasants just to shoot them and satisfy a kind of blood lust (if it's merely about skill why not clay-pigeon shoot instead?) but at least their end is generally quick and some of them end up on the table. Horse racing is rather different as the animals themselves are more sentiment and they are too often exposed to unnecessary risks just for the enjoyment of the spectators and the thrill of gambling and the money to be made from it. The number of horses injured in racing events that have had to be put down as a result just seems far too high to me and begs the question of why courses cannot be made safer.
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