Tennessee walking horses need the same kind of oversight that racehorses now have

They might be called Tennessee walking horses, but they’re popular and plentiful in the Bluegrass State, too. That’s all the more reason for Kentuckians to support efforts to eliminate horse soring, a callous, hidden cruelty that causes acute suffering to this celebrated horse breed. In fact, 78 percent of Kentucky respondents in a November 2020 poll, cutting across age, gender, political affiliation and geographic region, said they support key legislative reforms to end soring. All this puts Sen. Mitch McConnell, Rep. Andy Barr and other members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation in a good position to champion such legislation.

Soring is the intentional infliction of pain on horses’ legs or hooves to force them to perform an artificial, exaggerated, high-stepping gait known as the “Big Lick,” prized in some show rings. This can involve the application of caustic chemicals like mustard oil or diesel fuel to burn a horse’s limbs or “pressure shoeing” – cutting a horse’s hoof nearly to the quick, jamming sharp or hard objects into the tender area and then tightly nailing on a heavy platform shoe. When horses are ridden in training or competition, trainers strap chains around the animals’ ankles. The chains slide up and down as the horses move, exacerbating their pain.

By its nature a clandestine practice that typically occurs in the training barn, soring has virtually no public defenders. It does have enablers within the Tennessee walking horse industry, however, including the show judges that continue to reward the “Big Lick” with prizes.

At the heart of soring are the inherent conflicts of interest that result from industry self-policing, on which the U.S. Department of Agriculture has traditionally depended to enforce the Horse Protection Act of 1970. This fox and henhouse approach just doesn’t work, and if the walking horse show universe is to survive, it’s going to require the enforcement apparatus of a truly independent inspection authority.

Given their recent success in bringing needed reform to American horse racing, Sen. McConnell and Rep. Barr are well-situated to resolve the crisis that plagues the walking horse industry. Their leadership in passing the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act last year set the stage for enhanced protection of racing’s equine athletes with a new regulatory framework that relies on the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency as an independent authority for new nationwide drug rules.

In the same vein, the plight of the Tennessee walking horse cries out for an overhauled approach to enforcement and a regulatory framework overseen by an agency completely independent of industry influence – in this case, the USDA itself.

Soring has come into focus as a public policy concern during the last decade – with undercover investigations by the Humane Society of the United States in 2012 and 2015 that revealed rampant soring among top trainers, the introduction of the Prevent All Soring Tactics, or PAST Act, and a 2017 USDA rule designed to end soring.

The rule received over 100,000 supportive public comments. Unfortunately, the rule was suspended as part of President Trump’s 2017 freeze on pending regulatory actions.

In the last Congress, the PAST Act cleared the House of Representatives by a vote of 333-96 and gained the support of 52 Senate cosponsors, but the Senate never voted on it.

That legislation and the rule can be easily resurrected, and the case for their adoption is even stronger in light of a January 2021 report on soring by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The only political pitfall to avoid would be a sham or “compromise” measure designed to sow confusion, allow the continued use of devices that enable soring, and undercut the core principle of independent oversight by continuing the USDA’s dependence on industry self-policing. Walking horses have suffered for 50 years. When it comes to reform, we need the real deal.

Todd Blevins, Kentucky state director of the Humane Society of the United States, is a Bath County native who lives in Versailles.