Simon Rowlands: RSPCA and BHA fall out over new whip rules

Simon Rowlands / Simon Rowlands / 22 February 2012 / 3 Comments

The 'Whip Debate' rumbles on

"The RSPCA’s press office released a strongly-worded statement, describing it as “a black day for the racing industry”... However, that statement should not be allowed to go unchallenged."

Common ground is possible - and desirable - between the RSPCA and the BHA over the new whip rules, but it requires candour and bridge-building on both sides. Timeform's Head of Research and Development, Simon Rowlands, reports...

Like the West End show "The Mousetrap", the controversy over the whip rules looks set to run and run.

The latest instalment, a matinee performance on Tuesday, saw the new chief executive of the BHA, Paul Bittar, make further revisions to rules which had already been tweaked a number of times since they were introduced in September 2011.

In so doing, Bittar won over many new friends in the racing fraternity but might have risked alienating the RSPCA, which was apparently not consulted about these latest revisions.

The RSPCA's press office released a strongly-worded statement, describing it as "a black day for the racing industry", and went on to castigate a decision that "flies in the face of scientific research which shows that excessive use of the whip actually increases the likelihood of falls".

Racing can ill afford to be at loggerheads with an organisation which commands such widespread respect, both within and without the sport, and Bittar would be well advised to try to rebuild as many bridges as he can.

However, that RSPCA statement should not be allowed to go unchallenged. Judged by the organisation's own position statement - which can be found HERE - and by comments made elsewhere, the scientific research is an academic paper by Pinchbeck, published in 2004 in the Equine Veterinary Journal, an abstract of which can be found HERE.

The full report is an impressive piece of work, running to over 5,000 words and involving some sophisticated statistics. It is measured and clinical.

What it does not do, despite what the RSPCA might suggest, is establish a clear causal link between whip use and falls.

The term that is repeatedly used - once in the title and 19 times in the body of the report - is "associated". Falls happen more often when whip use is greater.

That does not, however, automatically mean that greater whip use causes falls, and the report is very careful to stop short of stating that.

The concluding discussion section contains the sentence "it is possible that these horses were going to fall anyway and the relationship between whip use and falling was confounded by an unmeasured variable (e.g. fatigue)", before adding "however, the finding that the risk was greater in horses improving in position suggests that this was not the case".

The first point is highly relevant, while the second is speculation. A different speculation might be: "horses tend to fall when exerting themselves to the full, even more than when clearly fatiguing, and this tends to be accompanied by positional prominence and greater whip use. The elements are associated, but a cause-and-effect link between whip use and falling is unproven."

The report itself refers to whip use and the position of the horse with respect to others in the field as "potential risk factors" [my emphasis] and goes on to identify that modifications to whip use could be introduced "if these findings are confirmed by the use of intervention trials (e.g. by whip-free or restricted whip use races)".

The RSPCA itself acknowledges that "further science related work needs to be done in this area".

As any scientist should know, absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. We need to know more where the link between whipping and falling is concerned, and that is an abiding message of the Pinchbeck Report, no matter what some might say.

I would like a future in which horseracing continues to work closely with the RSPCA to improve horse safety and welfare, even going as far as to facilitate the kind of intervention trials suggested above.

The alternative is a future in which the public - including the existing racing public - may feel it has to choose between racing and the RSPCA. Racing is likely to - arguably would deserve to - come off worse in that choice.

In the meantime, while racing has been badly let down - particularly through its dedicated television channels - by misinformation and bias on the subject of the whip, the way to counter that is not for the RSPCA to produce misinformation and bias of its own.

It is better than that, and racing should be capable of being better than that, too.

Comments (3)

1. R Hills is God | 22 February 2012

   When someone is laying these sort of charges at your door you can counter them, if you have the evidence, or you can sit on your hands for eight years and meekly chime that 'correlation is not causation' when the issue repeatedly comes back to haunt you.

   It's rather telling that the BHA has chosen the latter course.

   Remember the author has already made an effort to control for non-whip factors, if British Racing isn't happy with that effort and believes he has omitted variable bias it is up to them to show that.

   Of course the task is unnecessarily laborious as tools that would automate it, such as using sectional times for measuring changing positions, aren't available. The BHA are hoist by their own petard in this respect.

   The alternative is to use the experimental design to demonstrate that whips don't cause horses to fall. We already have a hands and heels series, with many year's data now. What does it show? Do the BHA even know? In fact do they even know whether this is a fight worth picking? If turnover/levy, attendances and participation is as high in hands and heels races as it is in equivalent apprentice races with whips then why choose this issue as the one to take a stand on?

   There has been absolutely no sign of leadership on this issue from High Holborn for years and Bittar appears to be continuing in the same vein: The major revision today being to the penalty structure, so that those who really feel the need, such as those riding a 'live one' for example, can give it an extra smack or two. So that the benefits of landing a touch, in a sport where the betting markets are rapidly drying up, can once again outweigh the costs.

2. Simon Rowlands | 23 February 2012

   I would say that British Racing has an obligation to accept the report or not. And "not" should involve challenging it rather than ignoring it.

   Accepting the report involves accepting the conditional terms in which it is couched and not drawing conclusions which the report itself does not draw.

   That means accepting that whipping and falling is "associated" not that they are proved to be causally linked.

   It seems to me that, by involving the RSPCA so extensively in the initial consultation, British Racing went further than it might have.

   I welcome that, and I very much hope British Racing can continue to work with the RSPCA for the better good. As mentioned above, I think it should take the lead and hold properly monitored "intervention trials" as suggested in the report.

   The report and the RSPCA's position does, however, beg the question "if the whip is a welfare issue because it may increase falls in jump races, why is it necessary to curtail its use in Flat races also?"

   The RSPCA may have addressed this, but I missed it if they did. There has been an absence of clarity on a number of sides in this issue.

   One likely consequence of the BHA putting so much responsibility on the discretion of its own stewards with its latest action is greater inconsistency in those decisions.

   A way of addressing this is with centralised stewarding, something I have called for many times. In this age of telecommunications (video conferencing, live streaming etc) it makes sense, to me at least, to have a small dedicated panel of well-qualified individuals considering the evidence and relaying their conclusions to an official on the course.

   These individuals do not even need to be in the same room, building, or country, as one another, providing they all have access to the necessary information and to ways of discussing it.

   And the BHA even have highly suitable individuals for this task on their books already, in my opinion.

   This suggestion has fallen on deaf ears, as did, by all accounts, an internal report on the possibility of centralised stewarding in 2006.

   Paul Bittar has many tough jobs ahead, including placating an understandably unimpressed RSPCA. But perhaps his biggest battle will be with changing the reactionary culture of many in the organisation he now fronts.

   Simon

3. Simon Rowlands | 24 February 2012

   And, lo and behold, an interview has just appeared on the ATR website in which Bittar says he "will look at appointing a centralised stipendiary panel in a bid to minimise inconsistency in decisions."

   If he wants further advice on how to run British racing he knows he can find it in my blogs. :-)

   Simon