Racing’s ambitious new welfare strategy intends to benefit all horses – not just thoroughbreds
Lifetime traceability of all horses bred for racing in Britain, quality of life, and a greater focus on thoroughbreds’ lives away from the racecourse headline racing’s new welfare strategy
The lives of all horses and ponies will be touched as part of British racing’s major new strategy that looks to improve equine welfare on and off the racecourse.
The racing industry’s independent Horse Welfare Board set out its new five-year plan at Westminster on 10 November. Its leaders emphasised how they believe its benefits will stretch beyond the thoroughbred world to better the lives of equines nationally and internationally.
The British Horseracing Horse Welfare Strategy 2027–31 follows on from the previous edition, “A Life Well Lived”, published in 2020. The Racing Foundation and Horserace Betting Levy Board have already put forward £1m-plus for 2027.
Its headline ambition is for 100% lifetime traceability of all horses bred for racing. It also has a stronger emphasis on horses’ lives away from the racecourse and how that feeds into safety, plus mental and physical quality of life.
This will mean a push towards digital records for medication and vaccination, plus better data collection in areas such as surfaces horses train on, workloads, injuries and breaks in training. The hope is that this will reduce accidents and injuries, both at home and on the racecourse.
It will also explore how AI, wearable tech, data collection and analysis can help build racing’s evidence base, again with the ultimate aim of risk prevention. This work will also stretch right back to breeding, early years and pre-training.
“If we are serious about taking responsibility for our horses throughout their lives, we need to know where they are. That is why our ambition is 100% lifetime traceability for thoroughbreds bred for racing in Great Britain,” said Horse Welfare Board chair Baroness Minette Batters.
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“But our ambition doesn’t stop there, because there is an opportunity for all horses and ponies beyond racing. I believe racing can help develop a traceability blueprint which will aim to transform the horse welfare requirements of every horse and pony in this country – starting by simply knowing where they are.”
She added that the Horse Welfare Board is working with Defra, the British Horse Council and other equestrian disciplines to establish that.
“Wouldn’t it be a great story for racing if we could make sure that we know where every horse and pony is?” said Baroness Batters, giving an example of why this is important. “We’ve [recently] had the worst outbreak of equine influenza for a very long time. One of the big challenges was that we did not know where a lot of those horses and ponies were.”
“Wouldn’t it be a great story for racing if we could make sure that we know where every horse and pony is?”
Baroness Batters
Top vet and Horse Welfare Board member Fred Barrelet also spoke about how the benefits extend beyond thoroughbreds.
“The research funding, the money put into veterinary research and scientific research, is primarily aimed at the thoroughbred and at racing – the trickle-down effect for the general horse out there, is huge,” he said. “As an example, research into gastroenterology, colic and so forth, feeding and nutrition. Yes, it's aimed at the elite performance horse, but the horse in the riding school will have the benefits of the outcomes of that research.”
British Horseracing Authority director of equine regulation, safety, and welfare James Given said that digitising medication records, which trainers currently record using paper and pen, is a “major thrust for next year”.
“We'll be able to look at what is the use of critical antibiotics, what is the use of joint injections, for example – population studies that will help us better understand what's happening in the training environment,” he said.
World Horse Welfare welcomes racing’s welfare strategy
World Horse Welfare has voiced its support for the strategy. So too did Newbury MP Lee Dillon, the parliamentary sponsor for the launch in Westminster, and MP Dan Carden.
World Horse Welfare chief executive Roly Owers said it builds on the achievements of the previous strategy “and has a deeper focus on a lot of the right areas, including traceability and quality of life”.
“Providing all horses bred for racing with a good life must be the key priority. We would especially like to see investment in better measuring whether racehorses are provided with a good life, at all stages,” he said.
Mr Owers added that knowledge of what a good life looks like for a horse has evolved since the last strategy was launched, so "it’s right to focus on how to use changing evidence to modernise ways of managing racehorses”.
“It’s important to put the horse at the centre and consider quality of life not from our point of view, but from the horse’s perspective,” he said.
“We fully support the efforts in the new strategy to improve safety for horse and rider and reduce avoidable risk by looking not just at what takes place on the track but what happens off it too. We know the ‘other 23 hours’ have a huge impact on a horse’s health and welfare.
“It’s refreshing to see a commitment to lifetime responsibility in this strategy underpinned by a plan of action. World Horse Welfare has said for some time that the welfare of any horse cannot be protected unless they are traceable, and we applaud racing for not only accepting this lifetime responsibility but committing to investing the resource and energy needed to fulfil it.”
“It’s refreshing to see a commitment to lifetime responsibility in this strategy underpinned by a plan of action”
Roly Owers
He added that World Horse Welfare welcomes greater emphasis on transparency and accountability, but would like to see further research on the use of the whip as proposed in the previous strategy.
“As a welfare organisation, it is no surprise that we would like to see racing move further and faster on evolving their approach to welfare, but we believe this strategy is realistic and deliverable and should result in better experiences for all horses involved with racing in Britain,” said Mr Owers.
Retraining of Racehorses also launched its own five-year strategy at the same event in Westminster.
View the British Horseracing Horse Welfare Strategy 2027–31 in full
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Lucy is an experienced news journalist, reporter and presenter. Since joining the Horse & Hound team in 2015, Lucy has reported from major global sporting events including the Tokyo Paralympic Games and multiple European Championships, as well as Badminton, Burghley and London, to name a few. She has covered current affairs and sports news across the full spectrum of equestrian disciplines and racing, as well as human and equine welfare, industry news and court cases.