Horses put down in Canada as racing industry declines

What a tragic state of affairs in Canada.

Baby foal Finale gets some help standing about a half hour after his birth. Finale’s career, and quite possibly his life, may be over before either really begins. Google image / MSN Canada.

The impact of the anticipated termination by the Ontario government in 2013 of a program that sent $345-million from slot-machine revenues to race tracks in 2011 is being felt in 2012. Already three of 17 race tracks have closed.

Ontario is throwing somewhat of a lifeline to the horse racing industry, offering $50 million over a three-year period. The Horse Racing Transition (HRT) panel created by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs responded that the amount is not enough to help the industry survive. The Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association asked for $210 million.

This is devastating news for the industry, particularly those whose livelihoods depend on it. What about the horses?

“The whole scene is just devastating to breeders,” said Hall of Fame thoroughbred trainer Roger Attfield, winner of a record-tying eight Queen’s Plates, and last fall a Breeders’ Cup race in Louisville. “People don’t know whether to breed their mares again, and people who have real estate don’t know what it’s going to be worth.” — Globe and Mail

It is predicted that Thoroughbred racing is likely to survive, but Standardbred racing will be hard hit and may not.

We covered this issue earlier reporting that foals were being euthanized at birth. Broodmares are now going the same way.

BEVERLEY SMITH and KAREN HOWLETT writing for the Globe and Mail report:

Veterinarian and breeder Garth Henry is planning to inject a humane overdose of a barbiturate – tentobarbitol – into the jugular veins of five of his nine broodmares. His mares – “my girls,” he calls them – range in age from 14 to 20 and could live longer than 30 years. The drug will arrest their heartbeats in two minutes or less.

Four of these mares gave birth to colts and fillies this year and are capable of breeding for several more years. The fifth, Plus Package, is 20, and because of her successful track career and breeding career, Henry had planned to give her a home for life. But now, Henry can’t justify the cost of upkeep on his farm in Russell, Ont., because the market for their foals is drying up.

“They wouldn’t be worth hauling to the sale,” he said. “And they’ll just be purchased most likely by guys sending them to the slaughter anyway. And it’s just not in me to do that.”

Source: The Globe and Mail

This is an-depth report. Anyone requiring facts and figures on the Ontario Government’s elimination of the Slots-at-Racetracks program will find a wealth of information in this article.

RELATED READING

– Thousands of racehorses face slaughter: Not so fast Canada; Tuesday’s Horse; Sept. 8, 2012

– Canada: Cancellation of funding program could mean 13,000 dead horses; Tuesday’s Horse; Aug. 31, 2012

– Foals euthanized in Canada as provincial funding of harness racing ends; Tuesday’s Horse; Apr. 27, 2012

Horse meat: A delicacy to die for?

CANADIAN HORSE DEFENCE COALITION PRESS RELEASE

Orangeville, Ontario (Aug. 22, 2012) — On July 9, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to an Ohio feedlot operator who sells horses for slaughter. The man was duly reprimanded for selling a drug-tainted thoroughbred horse to a Canadian slaughterhouse. Evidently, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had conducted tests on the carcass of the horse in August 2011, and had found phenylbutazone in the muscle and kidney tissues of this animal, as well as clenbuterol in the tissues of the eye: http://canadianhorsedefencecoalition.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/fda_doc.pdf.

The CFIA acted responsibly by subsequently reporting this finding to the USDA, and no doubt the discovery would have further bolstered the Canadian agency’s ongoing claims of running an effective system and ensuring the safety of the food supply. However, what is not readily brought to the public eye is the fact that the CFIA’s rate of phenylbutazone testing on horse carcasses is an abysmal 0.152% (143 samples taken on 93,812 horses in 2009).

Sinikka Crosland, Executive Director of the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition.

“With such random, scanty testing protocols in place, one can only imagine how many drug-positive horses slip through the cracks,” states Sinikka Crosland, Executive Director of the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition.

Phenylbutazone is a drug that is deadly to humans when ingested. It is a carcinogen and is linked to aplastic anemia, with children being most vulnerable. Clenbuterol is known to cause gross tremors of the extremities, tachycardia, nausea, headaches and dizziness. Neither drug is permitted to be administered to horses destined for human consumption.

At the very least, the CFIA should mandate drug testing on every horse carcass that leaves Canadian slaughterhouses bound for dinner plates abroad and to our own province of Quebec.

However, banning the slaughter of horses, our companion animals and working partners, would be the logical solution to preventing deadly drugs from entering the food chain. As well, it would stop the systemic abuse of horses as they move from auctions to feedlots to slaughter, as has been reported by the CHDC in various investigative reports since 2008.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Feedlot report:
http://canadianhorsedefencecoalition.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/the-true-faces-of-horse-slaughter-inside-albertas-horse-feedlots/

Horse slaughter footage:
http://www.defendhorsescanada.org/ (use drop-down menu on Investigations tab)

Ontario Finance Minister’s comments over funding cuts anger horse-racing executive

There is no mention how the cancellation of the Slots at Racetrack program, which is to end March 2013, will impact the lives of the horses utilized by the Standardbred and Thoroughbred racing industry. However, talk of breeders euthanizing foals, and owners considering sending a number of their horses to slaughter, is already being reported.

The Globe and Mail reports:

Sue Leslie is the owner and head trainer of Sue Leslie Stables at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, and president of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association. Image Peter Power / The Globe and Mail.

Sue Leslie, president of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association, is incensed by Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s comment that the provincial government’s Slots at Racetrack program took “money that should go to Ontario schools and hospitals and gave it to . . . wealthy people.”

The government recently announced termination of a 14-year-old agreement with 17 Ontario tracks that directs about $345-million a year to the harness and thoroughbred industries. The deal – designed originally to compensate tracks for lost wagering revenue because of the installation of slot machines – is to end in March of 2013, but three tracks have already been closed down.

Currently, 75 per cent of the slots revenue from the tracks goes to the provincial government; 5 per cent to the municipality where the machines are located, and 20 per cent to the horse-racing industry. Of the industry’s 20 per cent, about half goes to the tracks and half to the breeders, primarily through purses.

On Friday, Leslie said the slots program actually contributes $1-billion annually to the government, and argued that the $345-million payment to the industry comes from commissions earned on horse wagering and slots, and from fees paid by breeders to race their horses, rather than from tax dollars.

On Thursday, American equine breeder Joe Thomson had compared the Ontario government’s cancellation of the Slots at Racetracks program to a famously failed Ponzi scheme. Continue reading >>

RELATED READING

Fears are that the closure of racetracks will lead to the wholesale slaughter of racehorses. Breeders are already reportedly euthanizing foals.

– Read more at “Foals euthanized in Canada as provincial funding of harness racing ends“, Tuesday’s Horse.

What impact do slots and other extended gambling opportunities at US racetracks have on horseracing?

– Read “Help, Don’t Enrich Racing Industry“, The Intelligencer.