Flickr: Paul

Last Friday, Cambridge won the inaugural Varsity Horse Race at Newmarket. In light of this, Toby Crisford penned a critical article for Varsity online, titled “Too cruel for school?” It claimed that the author would examine “some of the welfare issues associated with” horseracing. Instead, Toby’s article criticises horseracing from an animal rights, rather than an animal welfare, perspective.

British horseracing has a strong record on horse welfare, with standards that go well beyond UK legislation. Last December, racing organisations launched ‘The Horse Comes First’ campaign to raise awareness of this. Human participants take their duty of care to equine participants seriously.

A workforce of 6,000 people cares for the 14,000 horses in training. Over 8,000 former racehorses are registered with Retraining of Racehorses as participating in second careers. Veterinary medicine – studied by three of the five Cambridge Varsity riders – has advanced with the help of over £23 million of investment from racing, with benefits for all breeds of horse and even other quadrupeds. Indeed, without horseracing, the domesticated thoroughbred breed would cease to exist.

All the while, horseracing is open and transparent about the risks involved. The proportion of equine fatalities is 0.2 per cent of all runners. This figure has fallen by a third over the past fifteen years due to welfare improvements. One such improvement is course watering, which ensures safer, more forgiving ground even at the driest times of year. A more specific case study is the Grand National course, where several modifications were made in 2012. The fences are now more forgiving, the start line has been moved further away from the noise of the crowd, and there is a new post-race cooling area. Since these modifications were implemented, the Grand National has seen no equine fatalities.

That is not to say there is no room for improvement. I hope racing maintains its productive relationships with animal welfare organisations like the RSPCA to further improve the quality of racehorses’ lives. This outlook is shared by animal welfare groups.

In an article for thoroughbredracing.com, Roly Owers, the Chief Executive of World Horse Welfare, argued that horse sports are ethical. His organisation “does not accept the claim that horses are unwilling participants in sport. Horses bred to compete will rise to the challenge, as anyone who has ever taken part in equestrian sport knows. This notion that sport is bad for horses needs to be challenged”.

Roly Owers goes on to hint at a very important point when he says, “If no one goes to watch the big races... horse sports will have no future.” If the public ever joins Crisford in being “overwhelmingly against” horseracing, the sport will cease to exist. As it stands, however, horseracing is the second biggest spectator sport in the UK. Around six million people go to the races each year, but if these figures changed dramatically, then the sport would die out – no legislation necessary.

Yet incredulity that racing is “allowed to go ahead” suggests that it ought to be banned. Crisford writes that racing is “an industry ultimately not concerned with animal welfare”. As I have just shown, this is not true. Rather, the concern is to do with a wider belief in animal rights. He does not accept the welfare argument that racehorses “have far happier lives than the billions of pigs, cows, and chickens” raised for meat. Instead, he believes that “we should be examining these other issues as well.”

At least 97 per cent of the UK disagrees, according to the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey, where only two per cent of people reported eating a vegetarian diet. Most of us are content not to equate animal rights with human rights. We are willing to domesticate animals in other ways, provided certain welfare standards are met.

Still, Crisford is most definitely entitled to his opinion on animal rights, to live his life accordingly and to attempt to persuade others to do likewise. I would not wish to legislate to force him to add meat to his diet, or to have a bet on the Derby. In return, Toby should not wish to legislate to prevent me from doing it either.