Horseracing Wrongs with Patrick Battuello

[00:00:05] Jasmin Singer: It's been a while since you've been on Our Hen House, which is bananas because I don't understand time.

But I did get to interview you recently for WXXI and I wished that I could have made it like a 20 minute piece because everything you talked about was really powerful and important. And I'm grateful that we were able to get your perspective, but I'm super excited that we have you back here now to discuss with us what's been going on.

[00:00:33] Patrick Battuello: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:35] Mariann Sullivan: Our last interview was actually in 2016. I can't believe that.

[00:00:38] Patrick Battuello: Wow.

[00:00:38] Jasmin Singer: Oh my God.

[00:00:39] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:00:40] Patrick Battuello: Wow.

[00:00:41] Jasmin Singer: That's like, that was at least 20 years ago.

[00:00:43] Patrick Battuello: Yeah. At least.

[00:00:44] Jasmin Singer: If you count the pandemic.

[00:00:45] Mariann Sullivan: It was either 20 years ago or it was last week.

I always get these two things confused.

[00:00:50] Jasmin Singer: So I know that many people are naive about animal exploitation generally, deliberately naive, many of us would say, but when it comes to horse racing, are there any special reasons people view it so benignly?

[00:01:06] Patrick Battuello: Yeah, it's a great question to start. It really begins with the way it's presented to us.

It's presented as a sport, right? The sport of kings. And I always tell the story that I was a big, big sports fan growing up in the 70s and 80s, and I didn't follow horse racing as intensely as I did the other sports, but I remember Seattle Slew and Affirmed going for the Triple Crown, and I certainly knew who Secretariat was, because ESPN said he was the 35th greatest athlete of the 20th century, and horse racing was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

There were sports movies made about horses. So it's really all about the conditioning of the American mind, right? So we're taught that it's a sport, and if anything is wrong with horse racing, the average person would say, maybe there's a bit too much corruption, and there's certainly too many drugs, but it's nothing that can't be cleaned up.

And I always say it's like baseball with steroids. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, so it's our job as activists, as Horseracing Wrongs, to educate the masses and to get them to look at this with a fresh perspective, fresh set of eyes. And, and we're confident that if they do, they'll come away saying this is no different from dog racing, which, as you probably know, is all but dead in America.

There are only two tracks left in the entire country, but even more telling, dog racing is prohibited on moral grounds in 42 states. So here we are, as a society, we have deemed one form of animal racing as unethical, immoral, inhumane, and the other we consider a sport. So that's our huge task.

[00:02:41] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that makes total sense. I hadn't really thought about the difference between the way we view dog racing, which has always been viewed as just kind of low rent, like unsophisticated, whereas horse racing, it's, as you say, the sport of kings, and My Fair Lady, the Ascot races, all of that.

[00:02:59] Patrick Battuello: When I meet an apologist, a racing apologist, I'll identify one famous greyhound racer. You can't, and yet, of course, the Kentucky Derby is billed as the most exciting two minutes in sports, and we all know of famous horses throughout the decade. So yeah, it's a huge disconnect that the American public has and, and the media, largely.

So again, it's a big hill for us, but we've made great progress.

[00:03:25] Mariann Sullivan: I don't want to have to repeat your last interview, but it was in 2016. So, for people who didn't hear it or who don't remember it, can we just get a quick, I guess it can't be that quick, but you know, a kind of summary of the life of a typical race horse from, to death.

[00:03:41] Patrick Battuello: Yeah, it's ugly from beginning to end. And, it starts with, they're forcibly torn from their mothers and herds as babies. They are rushed into intensive training at the tender age of 18 months, and they are first raced at 2, which on the maturation chart is the rough equivalent of a 6 year old child.

From there, the abuse only worsens. Perhaps the very worst of it for me as an activist, and I'm sure for you guys, is the confinement. It is my opinion that's the worst thing that we do to any species. We stick them in a cage, in a crate, or in the case of horses, in a stall, a tiny 12x12 stall, all alone.

These are naturally social herd animals, and we keep them there for 23 plus hours every day. The only time they get out is for morning training or if it's a race day to go out and race, and they're right back in their stalls again. And that, as a rule, is the unremitting, unforgiving life of a racehorse, and this can go on for years.

It's even worse than death. It's that suffering that these poor animals experience. We see with racehorses, confined racehorses, the same stereotypies or vices that we used to see with the Ringling Elephants you remember. The weaving and the bobbing and the swaying and, for the horses, there's kicking and digging.

They do what's called cribbing or wind sucking. They'll grab onto whatever they can inside their stall and suck in air. These are clear, unequivocal signs of distress, of emotional and mental anguish. And, everything that I say, I should point out, I'm very much all about evidence, hard, irrefutable facts, so this is not just my opinion, we have experts on our website that attest to that.

We have famous animal behaviorists and equine veterinarians talking about the evil, and there's no other word for it, of confinement and isolation. They are, of course, drugged and doped, and I think that most people know that horses are drugged and doped. But if you were to read the mainstream media, you would think that that's the only thing that's wrong with horse racing.

And of course nothing could be further from the truth. It's, it's a wrong, but it's not even close to being the worst thing that we do to these animals. They are of course whipped. I have a riff that I do on, if horse racing is a sport, then we must redefine that word because it resembles no other accepted sport on the planet.

And one of the things I talk about is in what other sport would you beat the athlete to get him to perform? It's absurd, right? And, make no question about it, the whipping hurts the horses. We often hear from those in the industry that it's merely a painless guide and they're reacting more to just the crack of the whip or the sound of the whip.

That's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. And we, again, have this great video clip of Dr. Rick Arthur. He was the former equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board and, very important, he is a pro racing veterinarian. He was at an international conference and he talked about the optics of whipping, but he went on to say, let's not pretend here, of course, it hurts the horses. That's why they do it.

It's run faster or I will whip you. So, we have that. We have something, and if you'll indulge me for a moment or two, that most people don't even think about when we think of horse racing and racehorses, and that's the bits. I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the bit, but it's a chunk of metal that goes inside the horse's mouth and it's used to control.

It's attached to the reins, and similarly to the whip, it's a way to control the animal. Well, not only does that metal hurt the horse, cause physical discomfort, because it's wedged into the soft palate of the mouth, but this is something I didn't learn until last summer. So we were out at Saratoga Racecourse protesting, and a professional photographer was taking shots of us, and she's friendly to our cause, and she said that she was going to be going into the track. And she was going to take some shots of the patrons, and Nicole, our executive director, asked her if she could take some shots of the horses heads and all the paraphernalia on these racehorses.

The nose chains, the lip chains, the eye blinders, the tongue ties. Well, she got these extremely powerful photographs. And I see animal abuse, clearly. You would see animal abuse. But who are we, right? They're going to dismiss us. And we're just anthropomorphic, sentimental, soft hearted people.

So I went to our advisory board, and Dr. Nicholas Dodman, he's an internationally known animal behaviorist, he's a former Tufts professor, and he said it's a little out of my wheelhouse, but I'm going to reach out to a colleague of mine from Tufts who specializes in equine ear, nose, and throat. You can't get any more expert than that, right?

So I appealed to Dr. Robert Cook is his name. He's retired from Tufts. And he's written extensively on bits, actually, and horses. And he was hesitant. You know, we are, after all, an abolitionist animal rights organization. And he didn't want to be necessarily associated with that. But I said, look at all I'm looking for is your professional assessment of what you're seeing in those photos.

And finally, he agreed, and he wrote this devastating statement, and it's on our website, and he said that in nature, horses are obligate nose breathers, so when they're running, they keep a tight lip seal so as to not take in air through their mouths. He said, all of those horses racing on that day at Saratoga, which is perhaps the preeminent track in the entire country, all of those horses racing on that day would be unable to create that lip seal.

And again, these are his words. He said they would feel like they are suffocating, asphyxiating, and he likened it to waterboarding. Those were his words. And again, no animal rights activist. This is an expert on equine ear, nose, and throat. Something that most people have never thought about. I had never thought.

I mean, I knew that the bits were painful, but I didn't know that it caused that kind of terrible stress for these poor animals. So, it's one of those things that the more you dig in, the worse it is, and of course there's slaughter, which we can get into, but that's the general overview of the lives of these poor animals and of course, death at the track.

[00:09:50] Jasmin Singer: It's bananas how people just normalize certain things, like they need to believe it for whatever reason. And I mean, we have 10 billion examples of that because we're vegan animal activists, but that's just one of them. And it's just crazy. Like, it's just totally upside down to me. Like even just riding the horses, like when you're like kicking them, it's like, oh, it doesn't hurt them.

You're kicking an individual like.

[00:10:13] Mariann Sullivan: One of the things that drives me the most crazy when you hear people say, they love to run.

[00:10:18] Patrick Battuello: Yeah.

[00:10:18] Mariann Sullivan: As if the only thing to complain about is that they're being made to run, like for the few minutes that they get to run.

[00:10:25] Patrick Battuello: They do love to run, Mariann, in the wild, right?

[00:10:29] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. and they like to run where they like to go. And yeah.

[00:10:32] Patrick Battuello: Yeah. And the confinement and the isolation, the 23 hour a day confinement, makes a mockery of that claim that they love to run. And what happens at the track is so unnatural. And, again, these are flight animals, prey animals.

So, they're forced into this artificial herd in tight quarters. This is one of the reasons that they break down as often as they do. And there's a sense of panic. And that's what they're running from is that is that panic and stress. They're not doing anything that they love to do at the racetrack, so it's absurd and I echo what you said, Jasmin.

It's... I keep going back to the word insane, you know how you cannot see this once you start looking at it with an objective perspective, how you cannot see how insane this is that we're doing this to these horses. And you mentioned horseback riding. I'd just like to address that real quick.

So often, in fact, we just received an email the other day, someone who considers herself an equine advocate and she wanted to know our thoughts on it. And our position is this, it's not the worst thing, of course, that we do to horses. And, there are people who, perhaps, have a symbiotic relationship with their horses, and they go for trail riding and, but for us, it's wrong.

We shouldn't be on their backs, right? It's unnatural. And, and that's what we tell people. It's something that we just can't, we can't support in any way, shape or form.

[00:11:50] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I often feel like when I meet someone who's like a horseback rider and they say they love their horse so much, I actually usually think that this is a way in and I won't start with like, well, then why are you riding a horse?

I think a lot of us have ridden horses at some point in our life, you know, but we've also eaten meat, you know, and And so I usually think, great, I have an in here, and they would be horrified by things like slaughter, like horse slaughter, or things like that, and maybe don't even think about that. But I do have a question for you, which is like, related to what our country really lives on, subsists on, which is capitalism.

So follow the money for us. How much money is in this industry, and who's getting it?

[00:12:35] Patrick Battuello: That's a great, great question. So, if you were to listen to the industry, in fact, a report just came out today. In New York State alone, they're saying the horse racing industry creates a 3 billion economic impact.

It's outrageous how they make up these numbers. Of course, it was commissioned by the American Horse Council. So, you can't believe the numbers that they put out, the jobs that are tied to the industry, again, they're grasping out of thin air. 75 percent of the U. S. horse racing industry is being propped up by taxpayer subsidies.

75%. So, it is no exaggeration to say that if we took that money away and, and, sent it where it was supposed to go in the first place, and that's to education, all state sanctioned gambling is supposed to support education primarily, that this industry would topple virtually overnight.

So in New York State, and I use this because it's our home state, is a good example. There are 11 racetracks. They have received combined over 3 billion in corporate welfare since the program began in 2004. 230 million per year that we're cheating school children out of. Without that money, 9 of the 11 tracks would have closed years ago.

All 7 Harness tracks, there wouldn't be any Harness racing in America, period, without the subsidies. And Finger Lakes and Aqueduct. And I would argue that Belmont is only successful for the weekend that they hold the Belmont stakes, otherwise, its attendance has dropped 88 percent since 1978 at Belmont alone.

Saratoga is the only self sufficient track in the state, and the same story plays out in state after state around the country. So it does not create the economic impact. Obviously, the Kentucky Derby is still very popular, it's a big day, and they generate a lot of bets on that particular day, and there's a lot of hype around that, but you get beyond the Triple Crown races, and, three or four other races throughout the year, and this is a dead industry, and the demographics are horrible.

They don't draw the younger generations. The reason for that is twofold. Clearly, there's more competition for the gambling dollar than there was 60 years ago with lotteries, casinos, and now mobile sports betting. You can pick up your phone. But there are changing sensibilities, right? You don't have to be an animal rights activist or a vegan as a 25 year old to look at this and go, Why are we doing this?

Why are we whipping horses? So I could bet when I can, again, bet on basketball and football on my phone. There's just different sensibilities surrounding animal exploitation, and most specifically on animal entertainment. Look at what's happened in the past ten years. Ringling Brothers, the animal version, gone forever. SeaWorld is in decline because of Blackfish.

There are rodeo bands in cities as diverse as Pittsburgh and San Francisco. And again, as I mentioned, dog racing is all but dead. So clearly we know where this is heading, it's just a question of how many horses we can save before we get there.

[00:15:25] Jasmin Singer: I just want to say really quickly that I was in Saratoga Springs not that long ago, for those of you who are listening to this who aren't, you know, based in or around New York or don't know about the industry in New York, but I was there because it's halfway between my house in Rochester, my mom's house in Vermont, and so we meet there sometimes, and you wouldn't believe the industry there.

Like it's every single banner on every single streetlight downtown is advertising it. It's like the culture there. I just wanted to kind of paint a little bit of a picture cause I, I'm from, well, I say I'm from New York. I guess I could say that. I'm actually from New Jersey, whatever.

We'll say New York anyway. So it's like, I get it. I know it, but I'm not sure if all of our listeners would understand just how deeply entrenched this is in our area.

[00:16:15] Patrick Battuello: It is, but, you know, it's important. Saratoga is in our backyard and the regional press, who has no clue about horse racing as a whole, looks at us like we have two heads. You're going to stop this? Because we're out there every summer protesting, and I tried to explain this is an anomaly. Saratoga is one of only six or seven tracts in the entire country that can stand on its own and is truly a draw. So you have to look beyond that. And, having said that, Saratoga is not immune to the, the forces at play here.

It has declined slightly over the past, you know, 20 years. The handle, which is the amount bet on horse racing has declined nationally. All the other metrics are down, including the obscenely named foal crop, which is the number of new horses coming into the system every year, is half of what it was just 20, 25 years ago.

So clearly, again, we know where this is heading, but it can't come quickly enough for us because, there are horses suffering and dying every single day in America for this.

[00:17:14] Mariann Sullivan: Can we just go back a little, because that number just really shocked me about the subsidy, like, I don't really understand how racetracks make money, I guess I understand how people who own horses make money. If their horses win, they get prizes.

[00:17:29] Patrick Battuello: Yeah.

[00:17:30] Mariann Sullivan: And all of that is paid for in substantial amount by tax money?

[00:17:35] Patrick Battuello: Yeah. So the way it works and it does It's...

[00:17:37] Mariann Sullivan: Like, I had no idea.

[00:17:38] Patrick Battuello: It's crazy, right? It does vary from state to state, but I'll just give you New York as an example. So they were able to get casino licenses at these racetracks, again, going back to 2004.

They're called Racinos, it's a combination of racetrack and casino. And so, again, if you had a slot machine in a restaurant or a bar, the percentage after the winnings were paid out and after the bar owner got whatever they got for hosting, the rest of it would go back to the state.

Well, that much more of a percentage is being diverted to prop up the racing operation on the track. So, again, instead of that money, that 230 million dollars, this is after all expenses are paid, that 230 million going back to state coifers for education, that is being used for purse money. So, we end up with, in the harness industry for example, 90 percent of the purse money paid out to the winning horses, the winning owners and trainers, comes from the slot machines.

Doesn't come from bets, and it certainly doesn't come from attendance, because they don't even charge for attendance. You can count on two hands how many people are at a harness track. That's why it's being propped up. It's hard to get people to understand that, because it's not the state actually cutting a check to the horse racing industry, but it's money that never gets back to the state when it was supposed to. It's being diverted to prop up the horse racing. So.

[00:18:58] Mariann Sullivan: That's why I didn't understand it, I guess. It's meant to be not understood.

[00:19:03] Patrick Battuello: Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, just think about how many teachers you could hire with 230 million and how many lunch programs could be funded.

So I say when I'm lobbying down in Albany about this issue, I say it's a triple wrong. So, number one, it's an affront to the free market system, right? How many businesses and industries don't get subsidies and are expected to sink or swim on their product and services alone, right?

Number two, it's cheating school children out of desperately needed education dollars. And number three, by the way, we're killing over 100 horses a year in New York State alone, so it's a triple wrong and it's an absolutely winning argument. You could take the cruelty and the killing out of it completely and it's still a winning argument but, unfortunately, in our case at New York, Governor Hochul is a big horse racing supporter so, we're a bit hamstrung at the present.

[00:19:51] Mariann Sullivan: So you alluded to horses dying on the track but that wasn't really a topic that we got to and I know that is one of your big focuses. Can you just give us the big picture of what's going on there?

[00:20:02] Patrick Battuello: That's what we're mostly known for, Mariann. When we started in 2014 or 2013, the very first thing I did was start filing FOIA requests with state racing commissions around the country, because again, I needed irrefutable ammunition to go after this industry.

I couldn't just say, this is animal abuse, this is animal cruelty. So before we started doing that, no one knew how many horses were dying. No one knew the circumstances in which they were dying. So, we just hit a terrible milestone on our website. We have, since 2014, now documented with names, dates, locations, and details over 10, 000 horse kills in America. 10, 000, over 10, 000. We estimate, because we're missing a lot of data, private training facilities around the country we have no access to, some states don't give us the stall deaths or training deaths. There are holes in the data. But we estimate, and this is a number that has not been seriously refuted by the industry, that over 2, 000 horses die in America every year. 2, 000 racehorses.

That boils down to about six kills every single day. And they die in the most horrific of ways. I think most people think of a broken leg and a quick shot and it's over. I get the detail when I file these FOIA requests. As a matter of fact, I'm in the throes of it right now. I usually file twice a year, and as this information starts coming in and some states give me a lot of detail, sometimes 30, 40 pages on each death of necropsies, and the descriptions of these fatal injuries are just absolutely horrific, you know, bones sticking out, bones comminuted, which means that it's been shattered into many pieces. I see broken necks. I see what's called a sudden cardiac event, basically their hearts just give out and these are mostly pubescents and adolescents just keeling over and dying.

If people are going to read anything on our website, the Maryland, information that I receive is quite extensive, and with it, I get testimony from the attending veterinarians that have to go onto the track and, they give us a description of what they came upon with the injury and what the horse's last few moments were like.

So, if you're going to read anything, go to the Maryland Death Reports. But yeah, it's heart rending almost beyond words, especially this time of year because no one's talking about horse racing. So I'm putting this information out there and, you know, Nicole does a great job marketing it to the media and we've had some hits, but it's never enough.

You want everyone who, ever goes to the Kentucky Derby, watches the Kentucky Derby, or places a bet on the Kentucky Derby to read these reports and then try to come back and justify their support of the horse racing industry.

[00:22:43] Jasmin Singer: What's the current status of slaughter? Because I know that's why we recently connected.

[00:22:48] Mariann Sullivan: To turn to a cheerier subject.

[00:22:50] Jasmin Singer: Well, no, actually, I think there are little glimmers of hope in this.

[00:22:53] Patrick Battuello: While the numbers have declined somewhat, I don't know if we have a real firm handle on how many horses are going to Canada and Mexico, and as an aside, we don't slaughter currently on U. S. soil. The last abattoirs closed in 2007. It hasn't been banned. It's just been defunded. So there's no money for USDA inspections.

So now we ship them, which is itself a horrible experience. They're crammed into these tight trailers. And at that point they're just meat. So there's no concern for their welfare at all. The USDA has determined they can go up to 28 hours without food, water, or rest. Then they're unloaded at these concrete killing houses. I've got this quote on the website, and I'll just have to paraphrase it.

I don't have it in front of me. It's from an activist in Canada. She did a lot of undercover work at the slaughterhouses up there, and she said it just it absolutely broke her heart. These animals, again, they're trained to be, they're domesticated, right? And they're docile and they're trusting and loyal, and that's the way they're bred and they're trained.

They were rushing up to the men at the slaughterhouse, these people who were going to kill them, looking desperately for a friendly face. It just could almost make you cry just thinking about that. And, so the numbers have gone down somewhat. I feel very confident in saying that multiple thousands of spent or simply no longer wanted racehorses are being sent to equine hell at the end of their so called careers.

[00:24:20] Mariann Sullivan: How old are they at the end of their careers?

[00:24:22] Patrick Battuello: Typically they're no more than five-six years old.

[00:24:26] Mariann Sullivan: Know that thoroughbreds are bred specifically for racing in this really specialized way that makes them very delicate and everything. I mean, is there any way that there is a life for them after racing?

I know people, aside from the adoption, you know, aside from the activists who are adopting them, like, can they be used as pet horses?

Like you know, horseback riding, I can't think of anything else that people use horses for. Horseback riding.

[00:24:50] Patrick Battuello: I understand where you're going with that, and there are a lot of rescues out there that will retrain them to work in a different so called equine discipline.

Of course, we're against that, it's just another form of exploitation, whether it's, you know, show jumping or dressage or eventing.

[00:25:06] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, okay.

[00:25:07] Patrick Battuello: But yeah, there are some who will end up as trail horses, and then the lucky ones are just put into an open pasture with their like beings and allowed to be horses, but those are few and far between.

Thoroughbreds are notoriously difficult to retrain that way because of that lifestyle that they've been forced into and forced to endure. Again, we're talking multiple thousands every year, and a lot of the horses running at Churchill Downs, at Saratoga, at Santa Anita out in California, these high profile tracks, a lot of them will end up at the Slaughterhouse, for meat.

It's another facet that people need to understand and I use the word carnage to describe what's happening in the American horse racing industry. So it's not just the 2, 000 dying at the track, it's the multiple thousands more dying at the slaughterhouse at the end.

[00:25:55] Mariann Sullivan: Tell us about the new New York law.

[00:25:58] Patrick Battuello: So it's the strongest in the nation. So it bans the transport of horses through New York state to Canada for slaughter. The question is, will it be enforced? Obviously, you know, the law is great, but will it be enforcement? The penalties are fairly weak. We do need a national ban.

We need what's called the SAFE Act. There's been some version of it floating around for years and years, and that would ban any horse. And it's not just racehorses, mind you. It's all kinds of horses that are ending up at the slaughterhouse. Unfortunately, as you know, there's a demand for horse meat and if there's a demand, businessmen are going to meet it, right?

And so, there are activists fighting that from the other side in Europe saying, you know, go vegan, right? It's a simple message, and if we could do that, then the horse slaughter trade would end. But, you know, it's a bit complicated. In the end, though, all you need to know is that we're talking about thousands, and I still feel confident in saying that most, most spent racehorses end up at the slaughterhouse.

[00:26:59] Jasmin Singer: What about the politics? Like, how much influence does the industry have in state legislatures?

[00:27:06] Patrick Battuello: Well, it's a well heeled industry, right? They've been around for a long, long time. They do hire lobbyists, well connected lobbyists. We are up against it here in New York. We had a bill that would take those subsidies away from the New York horse racing industry.

And, we opened a lot of eyes, a lot of legislators got it. but again, you have to get to the three or four people who end up making those decisions and one being the governor. It's a really tough nut, obviously. This is a big industry, and there's a lot of money at play here, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about this, recently, because of the deaths. In fact, a report just came out about Saratoga last summer, 17 horses died at Saratoga. They average 15 every year.

So we're out there protesting, we're telling people as they're walking through the gates. It's almost guaranteed that 15 horses are gonna be killed this summer, and it can't happen without your support. But, it's hard for them to get too upset about that when they know they're going to be going home and they're going to be eating meat.

And so they're going to be using animal exploitation in other facets of their lives, maybe wearing animals or... so It's a really tough position because we know it's horrible, but I wonder how much that killing affects the average person. And so, obviously, we're gonna keep fighting the fight, and we've made progress, but again, it doesn't come fast enough.

And it gets very frustrating when you're out there and you're going down the list of these horses that have been killed at Saratoga and people walk by, say basically, I don't care, you know?

[00:28:39] Mariann Sullivan: You know, I seldom say anything positive about humans, as everyone knows, but I feel like, and I'm not even sure this is a positive thing, but I feel the temptation to push back on that a little bit because I feel like people are so inconsistent about animals.

And at least in the U. S., horses may not be as beloved as dogs, but they're pretty beloved. Like, people just love horses, and they have this total disconnect about the animals they eat. Now, I mentioned there are other reasons, you know, I mean, people, like, we do horrible things to the animals we love, as well as the animals we ignore.

But there does seem to be a special place for horses, at least in this country. I mean, maybe it's because you're talking to people who are going to racetracks, who are kind of preconditioned to be mostly interested in gambling and not in animals.

[00:29:24] Patrick Battuello: I agree with you. Yes, horses do have a special position in our society, maybe not the same as dogs, but again, it goes back to, well, there's another facet to this.

We're talking about ending horse racing, right?

[00:29:39] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:29:40] Patrick Battuello: And ending anything is difficult. Especially if you use the word ban. And I've deliberately stopped using the word ban, in recent years. Because people struggle with that, especially Americans. We're gonna ban, we're gonna take something away?

We should have that choice. It should still be an option. So, it's a difficult thing. I mean, people will agree with us about a lot of this. But they'll only take it so far. And they believe the industry, they take the industry at their word that they're really working hard on this. And animal welfare is a true concern of theirs.

And of course it's BS, I'm sorry for lack of a better phrase. They're all lies. It's smoke and mirrors with the horse racing industry. They say the same things and they've been doing it, you know, the 10 years that I've been doing this. The same press release could be released over and over again. It's a copy and paste, and nothing changes.

The killing doesn't change, the numbers don't change, and the cruelty obviously doesn't change. So, but the media especially is always going to go back to them for a quote, and often they get the last word in whatever piece. And we're respected as, you know, people who care, but in the end, we're activists, animal rights activists, and we're a little out there and then you have the industry saying we're working on this. So it's a struggle. And, again, we've made a lot of progress. I don't want this to be negative. I have a list on the site, 45 tracks have closed in America since the year 2000.

Forty five. And they don't open new ones, not without massive subsidization. Only two tracks have opened in that time, and only with subsidies. And high profile tracks at that. Golden Gate Fields in Northern California will be closing in June, at the end of this meet, for good. Turf Paradise in Phoenix is slated to close.

Arlington Park, which is a world renowned racecourse outside Chicago, just closed a couple years ago. We are making progress, and one other thing that I always try to point out, I had extensive conversations with the editorial boards at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post in the past few years, and after that, both boards came out with editorials calling for an end to horse racing.

That's a sea change from where we started, right? In the beginning, we were just dismissed. You guys are crazy. You're never going to end this. But we're seeing progress all the time. It just never comes quick enough, obviously.

[00:31:58] Jasmin Singer: Hey, you said something positive and optimistic.

[00:32:01] Patrick Battuello: I do try it. It's, you know, look, again, big picture here.

We are heading in the right direction. We know where this is going, but there are so many of these animals suffering and dying every day.

[00:32:15] Jasmin Singer: I have a question that's actually probably a trickier question than meets the eye, but what about the international situation? Is horse racing growing?

[00:32:26] Patrick Battuello: It's not growing. It's similar to what we experience here in the States, and we work very closely with the Animal Aid in the UK and, the Coalition for the Protection of Race Horses in Australia, New Zealand. We have a group in Italy that we're aligned with and we try to have joint campaigns with them.

It's similar. The US industry is the biggest in the world, so, you know, it's not a growing industry, to answer your question, anywhere. It's clearly in decline. And for the same reasons around the world that it is here in the States, where the younger people just don't care about horse racing and are not interested in and learning how to handicap a horse race. So we we know where this is going

[00:33:07] Mariann Sullivan: That's really good news.

I hadn't realized that I would kind of assumed that it was growing more internationally. No We talked a little bit about something and then I took you off on a different tack and we didn't really get to discuss it. I mean talking about good news. I'd like to go a little bit more into what's happening in the rescue and activist community, how that looks. Who's rescuing horses, and what happens to them, and how many we're talking about?

At the same time, the kind of the flip side of that, the humane washing from the industry, pretending that they're rescuing horses.

[00:33:37] Patrick Battuello: Yes, I'm glad you asked that, because, while the numbers have declined, we know that it's not anything that the industry is doing. Clearly, it's not.

It's, there are more people out there fighting the fight, trying to rescue these horses. So one of the things that happens, and happens all the time, is these so called kill buyers. These are brokers for the slaughterhouses, and they go to these auction houses, and they bid on these horses, and then they ship them up to Canada or down to Mexico to be slaughtered.

These are despicable human beings, and often they will buy a horse at auction and then go to social media and put that horse, hold that horse for ransom. And basically say, look, if you want to save this animal, he's going to be shipped next week, then you need to come up with, $2,000.

That's the bail to save that horse. It's despicable. And of course they just turn around. And it is a controversial issue because there are some people who feel like you're just feeding the beast, right? So they're gonna turn around with that money and they're gonna buy four or five more horses with it, but I totally respect the people who are on the ground, trying to rescue as many of these horses as possible.

So again, very clear here. It is not the industry that is responsible for this. The industry has been turning a blind eye forever, and it wasn't until HBO, Real Sports, did a, an expose in 2008, prior to that expose, it was common practice for the so called meat man, these kill buyers, to back up at a track on a Friday afternoon, and you could just unload your done horses, your losers, for three or four hundred bucks, he'd load them onto the back of the truck and then he would go up to, well, first to a holding pen and then on to Canada and Mexico.

And because of that expose, they realized they had to do something. The optics were really bad, obviously. So they put up these so called no slaughter policies, meaning that if you're caught knowingly, and that's the key word, selling your horse to slaughter, or if your horse ends up at the slaughterhouse and you knowingly are part of that, you will lose your license to train or to own going forward.

Well, to my knowledge, not one person has lost his or her license in the 10 years or so they've been in existence, and of course not, because they use middlemen. So they can't prove that they, they directly, they would never take the horse themselves and drop them off at the slaughterhouse, so, there's just different ways around it.

But yeah, it's clear. One other thing I'd like to touch on really quickly. There are horse rescues, obviously, around the country. We find it very difficult to get any of them to go on the record against horse racing. It makes me sick. I respect the work that these people do.

But it is my firm belief that if you are in the rescue business, it should be your goal to go out of business, right? Whatever species you're rescuing, your goal should be to go out of business. And you can't achieve that goal unless you speak out against the industries that make you necessary, and that's horse racing.

A lot of them get money from the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the TAA. It's an affiliated organization with horse racing. They will dole out money to these rescues, but they have conditions. It's all tied to what you can and cannot say. And one of the conditions is you have to speak positively of the horse racing industry.

You can't just remain neutrally. Anytime you speak about horse racing, you have to speak in a positive light or put it in a positive light. So it's disgusting. You know, I'm disgusted, and I've only come across a handful of rescues who are not afraid to say loudly and clearly that horse racing is wrong and needs to end.

So that's very unfortunate.

[00:37:09] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I can remember when that was the case, and maybe it still is for all I know, with the greyhound rescues. I mean, I guess there aren't as many anymore because there isn't as much racing, but they were kind of being held hostage by the industry, and they were just, you know, like,

[00:37:24] Patrick Battuello: Absolutely.

[00:37:25] Mariann Sullivan: I'm sure it's a very tough show. And with there, they really were. They couldn't get the dogs at all, if they didn't say the right things.

[00:37:31] Patrick Battuello: Yeah. And I understand, again. Another way of looking at it is, if you've saved 30 horses, you're saving 30 individual horses. You've done a wonderful thing for those individual horses. But unless you are speaking out against horse racing and the other industries that make you necessary, you are doing nothing for horse kind.

This will continue endlessly. So that's my frustration with horse rescue. rather they downsize their operation and not take any blood money from racing related interests and, do it that way. And I also believe that any rescue, whatever, factory farmed animals, any rescue, their primary focus should be on education.

Because what good are you doing if you're not creating new vegans and new activists going forward? And so, again, you're helping individual animals, but the goal should be to change hearts and minds.

[00:38:21] Jasmin Singer: Well, and speaking of changing hearts and minds, how can people get involved in putting an end to this horror show?

[00:38:28] Patrick Battuello: Sure, so go to our website. We have a contact there, contact email, and there are all kinds of ways. Obviously, protesting is a big part of our mission because every social justice movement in our nation's history, whether it be women's rights, civil rights, sexual orientation rights, right down the line, it all starts in the streets, right?

It all starts with people getting together and voicing outrage. Otherwise, how is the public going to know something is wrong? So we believe really firmly in the power of protest. It gets attention. And then If you get media, all the better, because then you can trumpet your message to an exponentially larger audience.

So, we've sponsored protests in over 25 tracks and over 20 states around the country. Nicole, our executive director, heads that up. And, if you're, you're close to a track and we don't have a protest currently, you could organize one with your local group, and we'll provide all the materials.

There are of course other ways, there's letter writing, there's phone calls, and again, Nicole is terrific at that, and if you reach out to us, we'll point you in the right direction. And, this is a single issue campaign, but we believe it's absolutely necessary. You can focus on one particular species, but at the same time trumpet the larger vegan animal rights message.

And we certainly do that as a couple and as an organization. We never miss an opportunity for vegan outreach. But if you have time to give to the horses, please do.

[00:39:53] Jasmin Singer: And reiterate your website for us, if you don't mind.

[00:39:56] Patrick Battuello: Sure, it's horseracingwrongs.org.

[00:39:59] Jasmin Singer: Thank you for that. Before we go, in an ideal world, would horses exist?

Is there a role for them that's not exploitative?

[00:40:07] Patrick Battuello: That's a great question.. In an ideal world, in my ideal world, there would be no domesticated animals, period. Because for me, the evil begins and ends with animal property as soon as we own them, as soon as we, we make them and domesticate them, enslave them. All talk of rights is positively meaningless. They can't have rights. So I believe that's the worst that we do, is take away their autonomy. And so no, there would not be domesticated horses. There would certainly be wild horses, but no, no domesticated horses.

[00:40:38] Jasmin Singer: Fascinating. That's a fascinating answer.

I'll be curious to chat with our flock about that. Well, Patrick, thank you so much for everything you're doing. It's truly heroic and I wish that you didn't have to do it. I really truly do. But as long as there's the need, I'm very glad that you're there being an ambassador. And like I said before, I think maybe there is an opportunity for some reason when people care about, you know, non farmed animals specifically, then maybe there is an opening for other animals.

So maybe horses can also be like the gateway drug, if you know what I mean, does that resonate with you?

[00:41:13] Patrick Battuello: Absolutely. That happens all the time. We've had people come to our protests and, they have a special affinity for horses and they want to stand there, but they're not vegan.

And yet. Just being around other vegans, they kind of by osmosis, change their feelings about other, other species. So it's happened quite often. So yeah, a gateway is a nice way of putting it. And that's another reason for these single issue campaigns. Get people engaged on something and then they'll see the bigger picture, right?

[00:41:41] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I think also finding about the corruption, makes people realize, like, Maybe we shouldn't be trusting anybody who's got animals. There's this tendency to think that the people who are doing this are doing sort of the right thing. Maybe there's a few problems, but you find out how corrupt it is and how it's really so much about money.

Absolutely. I think it would make you, would make you take a look, closer look, or at least make other issues believable. Whereas before you might've said, that's ridiculous. I couldn't possibly be doing that to chickens.

[00:42:10] Patrick Battuello: Yeah, absolutely. Anytime money and animals mix, the animals lose.

[00:42:16] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, totally. Well, Patrick, thank you so very much.

Hang on the line because we would love to explore some other questions with you with our flock, but I really appreciate you joining us today again.

[00:42:27] Patrick Battuello: Thank you. And thank you for everything you guys do. You guys are terrific. Thank you.