07/10/2026
What do you think?
A STOCKTAKE ON GLOBAL EQUINE WELFARE!
In my roles as President of the UK National Equine Welfare Council (NEWC), the Sporthorse Welfare Foundation and the Welfare Stewarding Group, I spend a lot of time thinking about equine welfare.
Seeing the Tennessee Walking Horse video yesterday and the bleak results from the recent NEWC survey of rescue centres, rehoming organisations and sanctuaries made me wonder in which direction we are going with equine welfare. In some areas it seems there is progress. For example, introduction of gauges to limit noseband tightness in dressage, prohibition of whisker trimming, prosecutions for abuse.
But in other areas it seems equine welfare issues are being ignored or may even be deteriorating. So what are the current threats to equine welfare and should we, can we or how do we prioritise them?
Here are some UK and global equine welfare concerns…
🔴 Obesity/Laminitis
🔴 Abusive training practices (e.g tying dummies onto horses, turning out with short side reins, exposing to vehicles whilst tied up, etc)
🔴 Fractures/Fatalities in horseracing
🔴 Rescue centres – 81% increase in requests to take equines; 67% increase in welfare calls; 50% of organisations are “full”.
🔴 Cost-of-living-crisis – tied to above
🔴 Tennessee Walking Horses and the Big Lick
🔴 Smuggling of drugs in horses
🔴 Human-Horse abuse link - In some studies children/adults who have been abused are 2-5 times more likely to abuse animals
🔴 Coercive control - 25–89% of women with pets report a partner threatened, harmed, or killed an animal
🔴 Climate and impact on forage
🔴 Strangles
🔴 Overbreeding/Irresponsible Breeding
🔴 Long distance transport to slaughter
🔴 Working equids in lower-income countries – the “invisible” majority
The list is absolutely not exhaustive, and the items are not equal: some are already shifting under rule changes and prosecutions, others are structural and getting worse because cost, climate and demand are all moving the wrong way. Prioritising them means separating what regulation can stop quickly from what only capacity, breeding restraint and public consent can fix.
Which of these do you think we are actually getting on top of, and which are we still looking past?
