Gordon Elliott

Is the horse racing industry now in terminal decline, now with the shocking revelations that 4000 Irish trained horses were shipped to Britain for slaughter after their racing careers ended. Aswell as that the stopping of horse racing and crowd attendances because of lockdown s.
I just think the end of this industry is now in sight, I notice some prominent stud farms in kildare with sheep grazing them or actually ploughed up for crop growing.
The betting did not stop because of covid but just switched to other things, maybe those people won't return to betting on horses .
Are they shocking? Where did people think they went... metamorphed into unicorns?
I think the overlap between people who care about what happens to horses during races (i.e. betting on the outcome) and people who care about what happens to horses the rest of the time is a minority group.
 
Cows are slaughtered after they stop milking.
Why do we get all upset about animals we don't eat when we treat the animals we do eat so badly?
Pigs are more intelligent than dogs and we are aghast when dogs are mistreated but have no problem tucking into a rasher sandwich.

To be fair, I don't think anyone has an issue with the slaughtering of the horses although I can see why some people see the contradiction of racing people going on and on about they love their animals like children and then dispose of them once they are of no use to them. The issue here was the method of slaughtering the animals. Shooting horses from a distance like you are on a safari and in some cases not getting a kill shot is not acceptable.
 
To be fair, I don't think anyone has an issue with the slaughtering of the horses although I can see why some people see the contradiction of racing people going on and on about they love their animals like children and then dispose of them once they are of no use to them.
Farmers go on the same way and they talk about being custodians of the countryside when they are actually the biggest polluters in the country
The issue here was the method of slaughtering the animals. Shooting horses from a distance like you are on a safari and in some cases not getting a kill shot is not acceptable.
Absolutely. They should be slaughtered and, if appropriate, used for pet food or human food.
 
The issue is that the 4000 horses were all Irish, in the UK there is a well established program to rehabilitate retired horses so they are not being slaughtered like this. It just gives Ireland a very bad name along with the greyhounds and puppy farms.
But horse racing is a big prestigious indigenous industry and now it is mired in scandal. Remember the queen made a point of visiting the national stud during her visit here, maybe that will no longer be on the schedule. At the same time the whole corporation tax and international capital question is up for a lot of scrutiny by our big friends in the U.S. and EU.
 
Strange how we have a hierarchy of animals deserving our moral empathy. Some Brit visiting us here in the 4th century killed every single snake in the place presumably by the very inhumane process of driving them into the sea. And we made him our patron saint.
 
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I see the next Panorama exposé being the wickedness of mouse traps. Pictures of mice in terrible pain. Figures killed that would make 4,000 seem like chickenfeed. Horses do have an almost human attraction to us, third only to dogs and cats. But does that mean they should die in nursing homes?
 
I see the next Panorama exposé being the wickedness of mouse traps. Pictures of mice in terrible pain. Figures killed that would make 4,000 seem like chickenfeed. Horses do have an almost human attraction to us, third only to dogs and cats. But does that mean they should die in nursing homes?
Cats? Only people with mental health problems humanise cats.
I love dogs but they are not human and shouldn't be treated as such but if you own any pet you have a duty of care to it.
If we race or use or eat animals then at the very least we should make sure they endure the least amount of suffering during their lives.
 
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