Horse Racing...... ? Cruel or Not ?

PETA don't want anyone to own animals in any way. Their long term aim is for this to happen. They set out to shock and some of their videos are horrible. I don't trust them any more than I trust the RSPCA that have huge funds but put down healthy animals. There have been no fatalities in the National for several years because so many changes have been made to the race to make it safer, and this is ongoing. There was, sadly, one fatality at Cheltenham this year and this was a breakdown on the flat that could have happened galloping across a field.

Thanks for the info.

I'm more and more uncomfortable, really, about animals being treated as just commodities.

I think their lives sound rather sad, however pampered they might be.

So you don't think we should have pet dogs or cats?

Most people have dogs and cats just for the pleasure of their company. There are the few that buy pedigrees in order to make money out of them through breeding or as a sort of status symbol but I think they are a minority.

The high number of horses that are bred primarily for racing is very different. It is all about making money - and a large percentage of the horses are destroyed by the very early age of 5.

I really don't see how this so-called "sport" can be justified. Somebody said if horses weren't used in this way then there wouldn't be many horses. Surely it would be better to have fewer horses than thousands being bred, exploited for money and then destroyed?

As long as the dogs and cats aren't bred into the most ridiculous shapes, just to suit humans, who decide that what nature does isn't good enough.

I'm being a total hypocrite, because I'm a meat eater, but I was struck by a vegan talking about people "fetishising" animals.