The tarnished Triple Crown

It's that sad time of year again, when interest turns to horse racing, and the glitz and glamour of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing once again find their way onto sports tickers and television broadcasts. Thoroughbreds are shown at their finest: strong, beautiful animals in the prime of life. Everyone loves the horses: "They're so beautiful!" "They love to run--they're born for it!" "There's nothing so majestic as a horse." But what really happens when the sun sets on the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes? What kind of lives do these companionable, sensitive, and often timid animals have?

The horse racing world was shaken up in 2003 when it was announced that the 1986 Kentucky Derby champion Ferdinand likely met his end in a Japanese slaughterhouse. The "gentlest horse you could imagine" lived out the final moments of his life not in the luscious meadows of Kentucky or the rolling hills of Saratoga Springs, but brutally hoisted upside down, bleeding from the neck in an abattoir, his May day of glory nothing but a distant memory to his butchers. And apparently meaningless as well to those who purport to love their racing horses so much, because even after this revelation, the show has gone on. It seems clear that horse breeders, trainers, and enthusiasts love money most of all, because Ferdinand's fate is all too common in the horse racing industry.

Horses that don't run fast enough, don't win often enough, break down on the track (who can forget the horror of Barbaro's injury in last year's race, just one of many, many horses who have met a tragic end for this human entertainment), or don't sire a winner are worthless to their "owners" and the industry. According to Equine Advocates, approximately one-third of all horses slaughtered in the United States and Canada each year come from the horse racing industry. Even winners have met an abusive fate, killed for insurance money or drugged with performance-enhancing and pain-masking medications to keep them running even with injuries. If a Kentucky Derby champion like Ferdinand--America's Horse of the Year in 1987--can be treated with such disregard, imagine what is happening to the winners and losers that come and go on a random night at Vernon Downs or Pimlico, far cries from the prestige and oppulence of the Triple Crown races.

It seems clear that people who love horses should boycott the Triple Crown and all horse-associated entertainment. Without the millions that this abuse generates from spectators each year, the industry would surely collapse.

I used to spend time in south central Pennsylvania and often took walks to the pastures of a nearby thoroughbred farm. On many hazy summer evenings I'd have the pleasure of observing a mare and her foal grazing and nuzzling in the slanting sun. Sometimes I'd see a young colt running or kicking up his heels in play while his mother looked on. Often I'd cry, knowing the likely fate of this beautiful being whose life would soon be used by everyone but himself. The rest of those tears I'd hold in a heavy heart, because I stayed with horse lovers during my trips there, horse lovers who didn't see what I saw and who were Triple Crown crazy. And it is a craziness, I've decided. How else can we can explain the yearly denial about what a tarnished industry horse racing really is? How else can we believe that the glitter of the Triple Crown is anything but a shiny distraction from exploitation?

Ferdinand and the others meet an end they do not deserve. "He was so sweet," Ferdinand's groom Toshiharu Kaibazawa fondly recalled. All thoroughbreds are sweet. They're all individuals. They're all sentient beings. They're literally running for their lives, and only a few succeed. Some of those and most of the rest, bred for entertainment and valued for little else, end up in cruel hands and recipes.

I fervently hope that the day will soon come when no horse has to run for roses or under the lash of a jockey but instead is free to run as his own will dictates and because that is what horses sometimes do.

Local co-op begins beef sales

After years of trying, GreenStar Cooperative Market has sadly secured a supplier of local beef. The co-op has long been a purveyor of animal flesh and secretions for many of its customers--"free-range" eggs; "humane" milk; and chickens, fish, turkeys, and other creatures reside, dead, in the deli and freezers there. But those animals were apparently not enough to curb the appetites of GreenStar shoppers who have damanded (and will now receive) nothing short of a smorgasboard at the top of the food chain. The new supplier, a dairy in Nichols, NY, will bring both cattle and pig flesh to the co-op.

The individuals in GreenStar's Marketing and Member Services Departments apparently do not recognize that not every co-op member is in support of their continued sale of animal products:

GreenStar’s business is guided by the collective voice of its members. Getting red meats into the stores may have taken longer than it would have elsewhere, but it has been carefully carried out to express the wishes and values of the members. Subsequently, the meat itself is more than a commodity. It represents the healthy lives of the cattle and the care taken for the soil. It strengthens our local food network and supports our region’s farming families. If you don’t eat red meat you may appreciate the care put into the process. If you do eat red meat, you’ll taste the difference.

I do not place myself in either of those final categories: I am neither appreciative of GreenStar's new avenue of exploitation nor interested in a taste. Instead, I am writing this letter to the editor:

I read with dismay the article about local beef in the May 2007 Greenleaf. The authors of the article assume there are only two kinds of shoppers at GreenStar: those who “may appreciate the care put into the process [of finding a red meat supplier],” and those who will “taste the difference.” I’m writing to let you know that there is another group of shoppers at GreenStar: vegan members who neither buy the flesh and secretions of animals nor support the continued treatment of animals as commodities. The article indicates that local beef “represents the healthy lives of the cattle,” and that is true--it represents individual lives taken prematurely at young ages for no other reasons than to satisfy human tastes and make a profit for the co-op. Farmed animals are sensitive, complex beings with interests that exclude being eaten by humans. No matter how “quickly and efficiently” these animals are slaughtered, when we breed and raise them only to kill them, we are enslaving sentient (subjectively aware) individuals whose lives are valuable for reasons other than those we assign to them as ingredients or profits. GreenStar has a long history of exploiting animals, and many members have not yet made the connection. It’s remarkable that co-op members who no doubt support our no-kill county animal shelter would also clamor for the flesh of animals on their plates. If people are repulsed by the idea of eating dogs and cats, how can they contentedly eat other animals?

If you shop at the co-op and you are tired of seeing animal products in every square inch of retail space in that store, please get in touch with me. Maybe it's time we revived the idea of a vegan co-op.