Report Release: Hugh Bowman Op-Ed

Being brought up on a farm in country NSW, animals were always a part of my life.

They sustained my family; we were taught to respect them, and we did.

The same was true when I started riding.

My father, Jim, was an amateur jockey, campdrafter and polocrosse player. When I was a kid he said he couldn’t teach me much, but he could teach me how to ride.

He was wrong: I learned a lot from him. One of those lessons was to respect and care for my horse and even though my career has taken me a long way from our family’s farm in Dunedoo, that lesson has remained with me.

Racehorses have sustained my family for 25 years. But there are many more across the country like me, with the industry supporting nearly 80,000 full time jobs in Australia.

As a nation, racing has played an important role in our culture and our history. In most country towns the next thing to be built after a church and hotel was the racetrack. There are now over 300 clubs holding race meetings 364 days of the year in Australia.

But no matter if a horse is racing at Randwick in the $15 million Everest, or out west at Walgett for a fraction of that prizemoney, there are some things that do not change. And the most important of these is that our key participants - our horses - are well cared for. This means making sure their physical and mental needs are being met.

Horses only spend a relatively short period of their lives on the racetrack and I am one of the lucky few who get to engage with them when they are at the height of their athletic powers. But our responsibility must go beyond the racecourse.

In early 2020 key sectors of the thoroughbred racing and breeding industries came together and appointed an expert panel to inquire into thoroughbred welfare.

The aim was to make sure that, as a national industry, we were aware of any areas where we could improve and any regulatory gaps that needed addressing.

The results of that work, a report called A Framework for Thoroughbred Welfare, was published today (Monday 29).

The report acknowledges lots of good work is already going on. In NSW the governing body has spent well over $30 million buying and upgrading properties to help retrain and rehome thoroughbreds after they finish their careers, while in Victoria more than $8 million is being spent on welfare every year.

But the report has also highlighted areas where must do better.

The plan recommends that government and the industry develop and implement minimum welfare standards for all horses as a priority.

Coming from a farming background it is hard to believe we have such standards for sheep and cattle but not horses.

And the report also points to the need for racing and breeding to develop our own internal welfare standards to apply across all sectors of the thoroughbred industry. No matter where you are in the country, nor what your role is in this industry, you should have a responsibility to meet those standards.

We need to also ensure there is a culture where we are continually striving to do better for our horses.

The report also proposes a national horse register so we know where thoroughbreds are and in whose care after they have left the industry.

It also calls for the establishment of a thoroughbred safety net that would allow the industry to step in and fund the care of thoroughbreds that had become unwanted and at risk of poor outcomes.

The investment in welfare should be covered across the industry.

The report recognises the thoroughbred industry cannot be directly responsible for horses once they have retired and left our care, but it also makes clear that we must do more to help their transition from racing so they have every chance to enjoy a meaningful and purposeful second career.

Finally the report says we must have standards in place to ensure that all horses have a humane end to life.

I am grateful to the authors of the report and work they have done. It is now up to all of us in the industry to take these recommendations and implement them; after all, this was the lesson my father taught many years ago.

This article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Monday 29th November 2021.