Anne Seales is right in her condemnation of dangerous jumps in horse racing (Letters, December 20).
However, I must take her to task in her assertion that horse owners are devoted to their animals. Attend any horse sales or, as a recent undercover investigation showed, visit a horse slaughterhouse and you'll see perfectly healthy yet unwanted horses being traded and slaughtered for the continental meat market.
How many horse owners follow up on the horse or pony they sold on?
As for the racing industry, the ones who make the grade as racers may well be pampered during their money-making phase, but what of those bred who don't make it to the racecourses as they fail to come up to standard? And after the racing days are over, what then? Racehorses have been bred with lighter bones to make them faster. Hence the greater incidence of broken bones on the race courses.
Horse and dog racing are money making industries. What a pity that those making the money out of the exploitation of these animals can't ensure that they all have a decent life.
- Sue Baumgardt, Stoneham Road, Hove
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