Horse racing is a major global industry with significant welfare concerns including racecourse fatalities, overtraining injuries, and the fate of horses at the end of their racing careers.
Horse racing welfare involves both the acute welfare harm of track fatalities and the chronic welfare issues of training and racing regimes. Horses with undetected bone stress fractures who continue to race are experiencing ongoing pain before the catastrophic breakdown that ends their career. Medications that mask pain allow compromised horses to compete, increasing injury risk. The narrow genetic base of modern Thoroughbreds has increased predisposition to the bone fragility that causes catastrophic injury. Post-racing welfare is a significant gap - the thousands of horses that leave racing each year need funded pathways to retirement, retraining, and new careers.