For all its protestations about how horses are cherished and treated as princes, the racing industry regards them as disposable commodities. There have been around 1,500 on-course “accidents” since 2007 when Animal Aid launched Race Horse Deathwatch. That’s the number of animals that have died or been killed after, typically, breaking their neck, back, pelvis, or suffering a shattered leg. ~ Nick Sommerlad ------------- I wonder if we would tolerate these kind of death rates in a sport or recreation that involved human fatalities? Because we view horses as property, providers of entertainment and sources of profit, we place our interests above theirs. Their lives and their interests are subordinated to ours. If we had these kinds of fatality rates in football, track and field events or even auto racing there would be such a public outcry throughout the land that each of these sports would be forced to either make drastic changes or be shut down permanently. This helps to demonstrate the great contrast between the animal welfare and animal rights positions. For the welfarist, its acceptable for us to capture or bread horses, break their wills so they can be ridden, and then exploit them at race tracks and other equestrian events. For those of us who favor animal rights, we choose to recognize that horses and other animals have their own interests and reasons for existing that far transcend our selfish and often dangerous pursuits of pleasure and profit at their expense. ~ Dave Rogers
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 21:50:40 +0000