Sounds like her background and experience are good for her new job. I wish her and the HISA well.
So what are they afraid of? What are they hiding?
As I understand it, it’s a matter of control. The Texan racing commission refuses to give it up. Which is pretty much the way Texas and Texans behave in any situation–not just horseracing.
Ahh, like the electricity grid.
Texas is cray cray. They literally get 90% of their handle from simulcast so they will have 100% control of pretty much nothing.
I am retired so this stuff obviously doesn’t effect me directly at all but we had a couple hundred years to come up with our own National Governing Body, I literally ran for a seat on our board of directors to attempt to help make that happen almost 30 years ago. We have no one to blame for “the government” stepping in but ourselves. I am sure it won’t be fun but I don’t believe for a second that there are going to be raids at private farms at all hours of the night and people will lose their license for the bottle of banamine in the first aid kit like the fear mongers are claiming. We made our bed…
I equate it to Safe Sport. Can’t clean your own house no problem. Someone else will.
Former Texan, can confirm. This is just plain asinine.
Agree 100%. I haven’t read all of HISA, but from what I understand the mass hysteria is ridiculous. The government barely has enough agents to keep meat processing places open…you really think they have the manpower to chase down every little breeding/training farm to fine you for a sharps and banamine? They will concentrate on the big places, as they should.
I mean, I’m no fan of government involvement…they screw up just about everything. But racing has had a LONG time to produce a better solution, and states were too selfish to do so. And all active racing personnel had 6 months to review this proposed bill and make changes…but now that it is Law, everyone is aghasted and pearl clutching. If you have a proper Pony Club record book and do everything above board, I don’t think there is as much to worry about. Maybe I’m misunderstanding it though, because automatically reject and question mass social media hysteria.
Just take one look at the rules involving transfer of records after a claim and one can easily imagine a smoldering dumpster fire. It’s one thing to strive to ensure safety and integrity but it’s quite another to create regulations that will attempt to micromanage the industry.
As my life experiences have taught me, if one wants to see something get screwed up then put a lawyer in charge and that’s exactly what’s been done here.
Nobody said it would be perfect but you have to start somewhere. Continuing to do nothing and have a patchwork of regulations all over the country wasn’t working either. You know none of this black eye for the entire industry would have happened if Medina Spirit had the betamethasone in his system in Maryland instead of Kentucky? You shouldn’t have a multi year suspension in one state and nothing to see here in another.
I’ve seen this argument and I need someone to explain to me in small words what the actual problem is. The fear mongering gets in the way of my comprehension every time.
Are you referring to the voiding part?
You must need some really small words. My post clearly said “transfer of records” and nothing about voided claims. Here’s the bureaucratic mess I’m referring to, which is hardly fear mongering. Just imagine if 7-8 horses are claimed on a race card.
Who freaking cares? A few mouse clicks by each party and you are done. They aren’t chiseling them onto stone tablets.
I must also need small words (not just fine print) because I fail to see how transferring the horse’s medical records is impending doom. Will it be messy in the beginning? Surely. But requiring trainers to keep accurate, detailed records that can be easily (electronically, eventually) transferred is not unreasonable. I think it’s a great step in the right direction for the horses.
Yes, clearly I need even smaller ones because I’m still missing how this is quite the crisis everyone is making it to be. And I used to work for the biggest claiming barn in the country.
Tex, I’ll start anew to avoid extending a bloated series of posts. I too worked for an outfit that was mainly a claiming level barn at the time and I now work in an industry that is federally regulated. I disagree, especially for a smaller outfit, that all of this is easy greasy, particularly if an outfit chooses to keep records other than electronically (mine were kept in a spiral binder.)
Second, what is considered a record and how extensive should those records be? Who, besides HISA and the new owner, will have access to these records? What if a new owner gets the records and their written in Spanish? Can someone, possibly an anti-racing advocate, file a FOIA request and gain access to what should be private records between two parties and use this information in their campaigns? Getting the feds involved at this minute of a level is not good and totally unnecessary.
I don’t disagree that the industry should have some alignment regarding medication, but what has been produced is an overreach of authority. I wrote my congressman a couple of years ago to express my concerns about the committee hearings on HISA and my chief complaint was that the people who actually do the day-to-day work lacked representation in the process. That went nowhere as I now live in a non-racing state and I think my rep could have cared less, but at least my heart and mind was clear.
And, while it’s far and away in the future, let’s not forget about the potential (positive!) implications for aftercare here. As someone who buys 3-4 horses off the track each year, being able to have these sorts of records available and a paper trail behind horses is a huge plus.
I saw a very inflammatory post on Facebook about how terrible HISA will be. It was pretty much all paranoia and fear mongering. Trying to unite people against it.
