Week In Review: It’s Time for the Aftercare Debate to Include Passage of the SAFE Act

[Wandering Eyes]

It is, of course, a good thing, that the subjects of aftercare and slaughter are being so widely debated, with influential owners like Mike Repole and Aron Wellman all but demanding that the industry come together and solve the problem. Just last week, Pat Cummings, who has been working side-by-side with Repole on the issue, penned a letter to the TDN in which he revealed what he called “20 concise findings, with a funding model projection” that he and Repole have put together.

Good for Cummings. Good for Repole. Owner John Stewart and his family have also lent their hand to the aftercare cause and have been a positive force when it comes to keeping horses out of the slaughter pipeline.

But here is what I just don't get: Why is it that the Save America's Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act never seems to enter into the conversation, which has never been louder?

The bill prohibits a person from knowingly slaughtering an equine for human consumption or shipping, transporting, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donating an equine to be slaughtered for human consumption or equine parts for human consumption. There are no equine slaughterhouses in the U.S., but that hasn't stopped people from putting all breeds of horses onto a truck and shipping them to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico.

That's the key to this bill. If “killer” buyers are kept from sending horses across our borders to slaughterhouses they will be encountering an insurmountable roadblock that they won't be able to get around. Passage of the SAFE Act would make a huge difference and go a long way toward solving a problem that the industry continues to fumble. It's a no-brainer

Yet, the SAFE Act continues to be caught in legislative limbo. Put another way, it's going nowhere. Chris Heyde, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist who has dedicated his career to animal welfare issues, said he has been working on versions of the SAFE Act since 2001. The first SAFE Act was introduced in the 113th congress way back in 2013 and the bill has been introduced in nearly every congressional session for the last decade.  But it has never gotten across the finish line.

Heyde says that the biggest problem he faces as a lobbyist working to convince elected officials to get off their butts and get behind the bill is that he has no one who he can count on that has the political connections that are necessary to get things done in Washington. He had one in John Hettinger, who passed away in 2008. With Hettinger's death, the SAFE Act lost its momentum, and it has never recovered.

“We need a voice,” Heyde said. “We had John Hettinger and he would pick up the phone and talk to me almost every day. He would get George Steinbrenner on the phone to talk to me. He would run ads for me. He would call legislators for me. He would send me to fundraisers. He was doing all these things to help me. He was a true believer who put his money where his mouth was. That's exactly what we need now. We need someone with real influence to step up and help. I need someone who is truly committed to this cause and all this time I have only had two people who have ever done that, John Hettinger and John Rainey.”

Rainey passed away in 2015.

Though the conversation has gotten needlessly vitriolic, it's good that so many people are talking about the aftercare issue and how the industry can come up with funding mechanisms that will finally put an end to this problem.  No Thoroughbred (or any horse, for that matter) should ever end up being abused, neglected, abandoned or slaughtered. That is indisputable.

But that the SAFE Act barely gets mentioned is mystifying. It needs to be a major focus when it comes to the efforts to end slaughter and protect all Thoroughbreds, and it just isn't. There are a lot of very wealthy and influential people who are part of this industry. There are surely a lot of people in the industry who have political connections. It's time for them to step up.

British Isles after winning the Big Cap | Benoit

Saving the Big Cap

Sorry to kick the GI Santa Anita Handicap when it's down, but Saturday's race was undoubtedly the weakest in the long history of what has been one of the sport's most important and prestigious events. Yes, it didn't help that Skippylongstocking (Exaggerator) and Westwood (Authentic) were scratched. But even had those two remained in the race, it hardly would have been a vintage Big Cap.

What was left was a five-horse field that did not include a single Grade I or Grade II winner. The winner was British Isles (Justify), who, in his prior 23 starts, had never won a stakes race of any kind. The graded stakes committee will have a tough call on its hands the next time it meets. Is this really still a Grade I race?

The Big Cap has been around since 1935 and has been won by a collection of some of the greatest horses ever–Seabiscuit, Round Table, Affirmed, Spectacular Bid, and John Henry.

It's no secret why the Santa Anita Handicap has fallen the way it has. It has been engulfed by the $20 million G1 Saudi Cup and the $12 million G1 Dubai World Cup. There is no way a struggling Santa Anita, which doesn't receive a penny from outside gaming sources, can compete with that. As recently as 2016, the purse of the race was $1 million. It is down to $300,000, the minimum purse required to keep Grade I status.

It's unlikely that the Santa Anita Handicap will ever be what it once was, but there is a better way. To start, it needs to be moved on the calendar to get away from the two rich races in the Middle East. The perfect spot would be Memorial Day weekend. Around that time, there's a huge hole in the calendar when it comes to significant races on the dirt for older males at nine furlongs or longer. Santa Anita also needs to raise the purse back to $1 million. Yes, things are tight out there, but surely there has to be a way to come up with another $700,000. The Big Cap deserves every effort to pump some life back into the race.

John Kimmel Moves On

Since he is a veterinarian and has always proved to have a sharp eye when it comes to picking out horses at the sales, John Kimmel should hit it out of the park in his new career as a full-time bloodstock agent. Still, it's worrisome that he was all but forced out of the training game. Kimmel was, for decades, one of the most successful and astute trainers on the New York circuit. He trained a champion, he won a Breeders' Cup race, and he won 89 graded stakes races. He won six training titles on the NYRA circuit outright, and in 1997 he finished in a tie with Bill Mott for leading trainer at Saratoga with 15 wins at the meet.

Yet, he was down to five horses in his stable when he officially pulled the plug after he ran two horses on the card Saturday at Aqueduct.

Then again, all of this hardly comes as a surprise. Trainers, particularly in New York, continue to get squeezed out of the business. The same thing that happened to Kimmel also happened to Jimmy Jerkens and Kiaran McLaughlin, two others who had stellar careers before folding their tents.

It's happening for a number of reasons, among them the declining foal crop, the cost of doing business in New York and the overwhelming dominance of the super trainer. There are no easy fixes. Limiting Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher to, say, 100 horses or fewer would never work. Nor would that be fair. But losing a trainer like Kimmel is obviously bad for the sport, and something needs to be done to make life easier for trainers who are not fortunate enough to have the backing of the likes of Repole, Seth Klarman, Godolphin or Peter Brant.

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