British racing has set out a new five-year plan for the welfare of its horses, and its headline ambition is a simple one to state but a hard one to deliver: knowing where every Thoroughbred bred for racing in Great Britain is, for the whole of its life.
The Horse Welfare Strategy 2027 to 2031 was launched on 10 November at a parliamentary reception in Westminster. It was drawn up by the Horse Welfare Board with a cross-industry team covering every stage of a racehorse’s life, from breeding and early years through training and racing to retirement and rehoming.
What the new horse welfare strategy covers
The plan contains 20 priorities grouped under four outcomes: Quality of Life, Safety, Lifetime Responsibility and Trust. It follows “A Life Well Lived”, the sport’s first industry-wide welfare strategy, which was published in 2020 and has now been evaluated for the period up to 2026.
Under Quality of Life, the focus is on understanding the physical and mental wellbeing of horses. That includes better welfare data, long-term veterinary research, the training environment, and work on how early years and pre-training shape a horse’s resilience and longevity. The strategy also looks further upstream at breeding, with the aim of producing sounder, more durable horses.
The Safety strand builds on years of work to reduce avoidable risk on racecourses, but widens the lens to the training yard and the rest of a horse’s life. The sport plans to explore gait analysis software, wearable technology and artificial intelligence to spot injury risk earlier, and to gather more detailed information on medication, training surfaces, workloads, injuries and breaks in training.
Lifetime Responsibility centres on what happens after a horse leaves racing, working closely with Retraining of Racehorses, the sport’s official aftercare charity. Retraining of Racehorses published its own five-year strategy on the same day, with priorities that include better visibility of former racehorses, stronger lifelong support and more demand for horses moving into second careers.
The fourth outcome, Trust, is about transparency and accountability. The strategy openly names the issues that concern the public most, including injuries and fatalities, use of the whip and what happens to horses once their racing days are over.
Lifetime traceability for Thoroughbreds
Traceability is the thread that runs through all four outcomes. British racing says it already tracks every horse throughout its racing career. The gap is before and, above all, after that period, when horses move into private ownership, other equestrian disciplines or retirement.
To close it, the plan proposes collecting data at the point a horse first leaves racing, increasing the use of digital vaccination records, sharing information with other equestrian sports, improving national and international data sharing, and modernising core systems such as the General Stud Book. The longer-term goal is 100% lifetime traceability for Thoroughbreds bred for racing in Great Britain.
Racing also wants to go further than its own animals. The strategy says the sport will work with government and the wider equine sector on a practical traceability model that could cover all horses and ponies, and will make the case for legislation where gaps need closing. Baroness Minette Batters, the independent chair of the Horse Welfare Board, framed it plainly at the launch: if racing takes lifetime responsibility seriously, “we need to know where they are.”
Alongside the strategy, the British Horseracing Authority has signed the British Equestrian Federation’s Charter for the Horse, and racing has drafted its own Commitment to the Horse based on that charter.
Funding and what happens next
The Racing Foundation and the Horserace Betting Levy Board are named as the main funders. The 20 priorities will be turned into annual project plans with measurable targets, and the BHA says the programme for 2027 is already fully scoped and funded. The plan is designed to roll forward, so that projects can change as new evidence and technology emerge.
BHA chief executive Brant Dunshea described it as a strategy for the whole sport, one that depends on owners, trainers, breeders, racecourses and riders all playing their part.
The timing is significant. The BHA describes racing as the second most popular sport in the UK, worth an estimated £4.1 billion a year to the economy and supporting more than 85,000 jobs, but its social licence depends heavily on how the public views the treatment of its horses. As BritishGambler noted when looking at whether younger audiences still care about horse racing, the sport’s long-term appeal rests on more than what happens on race day.
The full announcement is available from the British Horseracing Authority. For more racing and industry stories, see the latest BritishGambler news.
