Panel on racehorses needs whip
Bo, a rescued racehorse, at Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard and Horse Rescue (May 6, 2011) Credit: Daniel Goodrich
Since its founding in 2005, the state Task Force on Retired Race Horses was supposed to report on -- well, on what to do with retired racehorses.
But delays in constituting the panel and repeated deadline extensions have meant that there's still no report. So Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was right to veto yet another extension, dispatching this plodding panel of volunteers to the glue factory.
New York has around 40,000 horses bred for racing, most destined to live long past their useful years at the track. Such creatures used to be routinely slaughtered for their meat. But like killing unwanted pets, killing old race horses is now seen as inhumane, and domestic slaughtering has been eliminated, though horses still are exported to Canada or Mexico for this purpose.
The outlook has improved for racing retirees since the task force was founded in 2005. Nowadays some horses are put out to pasture in prisons, where inmates learn horse-care as a vocational skill. Others end up as riding horses, or at former dairy farms, now the equivalent of equine retirement homes, which provide humane and cost-effective care.
Yet not every horse is so lucky, and the state -- to say nothing of the horses -- deserves some coherent recommendations. The state Racing and Wagering Board, which oversees the task force, is confident the panel will at last issue recommendations by year-end, when it officially rides off into the sunset. All we can say is, giddyap. hN
