Humane Society Forms New Racing Advisory Council

Joe DeFrancis | Horsephotos

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The potential of federally mandated oversight for the United States horse racing industry and closer scrutiny from national animal welfare organizations have existed on the sport's periphery for years. On Thursday those two concepts edged closer together in the form of a partnership, when the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) announced the creation of a new National Horse Racing Advisory Council (NHRAC), which will be comprised of racing industry stakeholders.

The NHRAC's stated purpose, according to an HSUS press release, will be to “advise the organization on promoting higher animal welfare standards” while “building alliances within the horse-racing industry.” But in a teleconference based out of Washington, D.C., both Wayne Pacelle, the president and chief executive officer of the HSUS, and Joe De Francis, the new council's chairperson and former chief executive officer of the Maryland Jockey Club, made it emphatically clear that a foremost goal of the NHRAC will be federal passage of HR 3084, the Thoroughbred Horseracing Integrity Act of 2015.

Pacelle admitted that while his organization has always been interested in the goings-on of the racing industry, direct HSUS involvement with the sport has not been “a top-tier issue” for the past several decades. “But today we're announcing that it's moving up on our priority list, and we are going to provide some considerable focus on this issue,” he said.

In its current bill form, HR 3084's chief aim is to police Thoroughbred medication abuse via the establishment of a federal, non-governmental racing regulatory organization headed by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). But since being introduced and assigned to a congressional committee on July 16, 2105, the legislation has not advanced.

HR 3084 has generated only mixed support from within the racing industry. The differences of opinion range from slight disagreements over semantics to flat-out resistance that anything needs to be done at all. The National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association has made it clear that it strongly opposes any attempt to utilize federal simulcasting rights as a cudgel for compliance, and the Association of Racing Commissioners International has spoken out against any bill that transfers regulatory powers to a private organization, like USADA, that has no experience in testing horses.

“I'm sorry to say that in spite of the efforts of a number of people to try and drive reform, we still have chronic problems within the industry. And one of the biggest problems is doping of horses,” Pacelle said. “Different standards for drugs in [38] different states means that [cheaters] are shopping for venues…They're so deeply involved in doping of horses that they are trying to find ways to stay ahead of the regulators.” This has led, he said, to “too many horses dying on the track.”

Pacelle continued: “We think that a national industry needs a national regulatory framework. If the industry had been able to do this on its own, it could have done it five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago…But I think the industry has proved [to] itself that self-regulation is not happening, and that's why we need the Congress to step in and set a framework.”

De Francis gave a graphic analogy of horse mistreatment in racing: Think of all of the positive, compassionate components of the sport as a barrel of fine wine, he said. Next to this barrel of wine is a barrel of sewage, which represents the industry's cheaters, dopers, and animal abusers. You can put a cup fine wine into the sewage, and it still remains sewage, he explained. But if even only a drop of sewage gets into the wine, it's ruined. Thus, he rationalized, not even a tiny amount of mixing between the two barrels can be allowed, lest it contaminate the superior product. “I think that story very appropriately describes the situation that we have in the horse racing industry,” he said.

“Any business that has animals at its core must treat those animals well, or it's going to run into a juggernaut of public opinion that really finds that industry's conduct objectionable,” Pacelle said. “If animals are not treated properly, then there's going to be a comeuppance for these industries.”

Yet despite their dire descriptions of racing's current woes, both Pacelle and De Francis expressed optimism that meaningful legislative reform is within reach for U.S. racing.

“I really see a consensus building on this issue, and I think the outliers on this subject are going to be marginalized over time. I do think that the Congress will act on it,” Pacelle said, noting that he expects a bipartisan Senate companion bill to HR 3084 to be introduced in July.

Pacelle's assertion that HR 3084 is “picking up good momentum” is backed by statistics currently listed online by GovTrack, a legislative transparency organization that uses logistic regression analysis to rank the likelihood of passage of the 10,000 bills that come up annually in Congress.

As of June 23, GovTrack gives HR 3084 a 10% chance of getting past committee and a 4% chance of being enacted into law. That's twice the likelihood that GovTrack estimated last July, when committee passage was ranked at only 5% and enaction was just 2%. (As a benchmark, GovTrack notes that in 2013-15, roughly 15% of all bills made it past committee, and only about 3% were enacted.)

When queried by a reporter specifically about Lasix, De Francis later made it clear that “the use of the term 'doping' refers to both the use of illegal drugs as well as the use of medications that are perhaps therapeutic in some sense, but also can be performance-enhancing and potentially health threatening.”

Beyond the advancement of anti-doping legislation, De Francis outlined other roles that the NHRAC might play.

“I would divide the council's responsibilities into what I would describe as 'proactive issues' and 'reactive issues,'” De Francis said. “On the proactive front, the council will be very proactive with HSUS affirmatively in addressing things like medication reform, horse slaughter, aftercare issues. But the council will also be reactive in the sense that to the extent that as new issues arise over the course of time, as I'm sure they will, then the council will act in an advisory role with HSUS to help to figure out what the best possible answers are.”

Pacelle agreed: “As Joe has indicated, we really want to see people who have horses providing lifetime care to them.”

Other members of the NHRAC were listed in a press release but did not speak at the teleconference. They included:

  • Jim Gagliano, President & Chief Operating Officer of The Jockey Club.
    Stacie Clark-Rogers, an operations consultant Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.
  • Chris McCarron, a retired Hall-of-Fame jockey who is well established as a mentor for aspiring riders.
  • Allen Gutterman, a marketing and public relations executive in racetrack management for over 40 years.
  • Joe Gorajec, who for 25 years served as the executive director of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission.
    Staci Hancock, who often advocates for equine welfare and anti-slaughter issues and whose family operates Stone Farm in Kentucky.

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