BRITISH RACING RISES TO THE TRACEABILITY CHALLENGE

“No horse no sport” is the simplest way to describe the importance of the Thoroughbred to British racing. The sport has a huge responsibility to the welfare of the equine athletes at the heart of this country’s second biggest spectator sport, one which attracts around 5 million people to racecourses every year and contributes to the livelihoods of more than 80,000 people.

The welfare of Thoroughbreds covers a vast array of areas from breeding and nutrition, to training and reducing the risk of injury, and racecourse safety right through to enabling a good life when the racing career is done. Basically, every aspect of the life of horses bred to race.

In 2020, racing started a five-year programme of continuous improvement through its welfare strategy ‘A Life Well Lived’. 26 projects covering safety, data, traceability, and aftercare are currently being led by racing’s independently chaired Horse Welfare Board in partnership with the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) and funded through the Racing Foundation and Horserace Betting Levy Board.

Data and traceability are the bedrock of this ongoing work.

What is traceability and why is it important?

In the simplest terms, traceability is the ability to keep track of any horse bred for racing across its lifespan. This in turn improves the care and support that the sport can provide. It also crucially enables swift and effective disease control, not just amongst Thoroughbreds, but the entire equine population.

British racing is one of the most regulated sports in the world and is already the leader in equine traceability in this country. To qualify to compete, a Thoroughbred must be microchipped and registered within 30 days of birth. This is the first critical point of data for racing – a birth certificate of sorts, detailed by the Weatherbys General Stud Book. Racehorses are accessible from this date onwards and the people responsible for their care are accountable. And when it comes to entering training, all aspects of traceability are covered and enforced via the sport’s regulator, the British Horseracing Authority.

However, there are still data gaps to address, and new technologies to bring on board to achieve even higher standards for the sport.

How is traceability measured?

The single most important document in the life of a horse, and to ensure a horse can be traced, is its passport. This is a paper document much like a human's, but like with dogs and other pets, this document keeps a record of important data such as birth, breeding, family tree, vaccinations, plus, most importantly, the owner’s details. In Britain and Ireland, Weatherbys is the single issuing body for passports for Thoroughbreds. And it’s a legal requirement for every horse to have an up-to-date equine passport, a paper document.

The bigger picture

British racing would like to see all equine passports become digital – to improve compliance and cost-effectiveness for new owners, ensure 24/7 availability and security of data, and to reduce the opportunity for fraud. While racing continues to lobby the Government to bring about this change, in partnership with other equestrian bodies such as World Horse Welfare, the sport continues to drive forward.

In 2021, Weatherbys introduced and issued its own e-Passport that sits alongside the mandatory paper passport for Thoroughbreds. This stays with a racehorse for life and provides much wider data. The Weatherbys e-Passport proves that digital passports can and do work. Over 208,000 horses from the British and Irish Weatherbys General Stud Book (a register of Thoroughbreds past and present) are now included.

The sport also continues to lobby to further develop a Central Equine Database that can successfully operate as a repository for data on all horses.

Closing the gaps

From 2025, the sport will launch ‘Racing Digital’, a new platform to modernise the central administration of the sport which will enable more sophisticated data collection and management during the training stage of a Thoroughbred’s life.

Many racehorses leave training but remain in racing, where their data is retained by the Weatherbys General Stud Book, and they are easily identified. For around a third of racehorses this is the case.

However, it is once horses leave training and move onto pastures new that the challenges become more apparent. At this stage, responsibility for updating equine identification documents (the passport) moves from racing to the new private owner. It’s at this point that equine sports can, traditionally, lose visibility of horses.

Racing, through the work of its Horse Welfare Board, has set itself the challenge to achieve a better body of knowledge about this population of horses, and to deliver 100% traceability at a horse’s first step on from racing. Coupled with increasing membership of the sport’s aftercare (post-racing) partner, Retraining of Racehorses (RoR), this will make a significant difference in closing the sport’s knowledge gap. RoR has a current membership of 13,000 former-racehorse owners which represents over 40% of the estimated former racehorse population in Britain. The plan is to grow this number significantly and investigate the possibility to auto-enrol horses with RoR when they are officially retired from the sport - an opt-out rather than opt-in approach.

Whilst this work progresses, the Horse Welfare Board partnered with research experts Hartpury University to launch Britain’s first Thoroughbred Census. This six-month project took place in 2023 and resulted in the former racehorse population being formally sized at around 33,600. The census also established that 80% of these horses are currently identifiable and active across a range of new careers.

The Census is just one of several projects being undertaken by British racing to improve visibility and traceability of all horses bred for the sport. Identifying and closing data gaps will remain a priority for some time.

End-of-life care

The sport’s responsibility also extends to end of life. In early 2022 British racing introduced a rule which dictates that any racehorse that runs in Great Britain must be signed out of the food chain. As a result, racehorses cannot legally be sold for slaughter to abattoirs, either domestically or internationally.

But there will always be situations where the humane and responsible outcome for a horse is euthanasia. To support owners and trainers with these difficult end of life decisions, a code of practice is in place to ensure horses are allowed to retain their dignity to the end of their lives and, if euthanasia is the only option, to have this take place at home or in suitable surroundings.

Transparency in data

In early 2024 HorsePWR was launched. British racing’s new digital hub brings together the most important information and data related to horse welfare in the sport – easy to find, easy to read – with facts and data provided and questions answered. For anyone interested to follow the work of British racing on equine welfare, and keep up to date with all the latest facts and progress, this is the website to bookmark.