The National Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association filed July 1 a Petition for Rulemaking under the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, requesting the Federal Trade Commission to create no-effect thresholds for medications in order to prevent punishing owners and trainers for “pharmacologically irrelevant concentrations of foreign substances that have no effect on a horse.”
If adopted, the no-effect thresholds, also known as no-effect screening limits or no-effect cutoffs, would be required to be used by the HISA Authority’s enforcement arm, the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit.
“The National HBPA is committed to doing everything it can to protect horsemen,” said Eric Hamelback, CEO of the National HBPA. “We need to reshape the HIWU system into one that does not punish blameless trainers and their owners for barely detectible levels of foreign substances. The current process is harming the horse racing industry by publicly shaming as dopers good men and women with reputations for integrity in the sport. Worst of all, these ‘adverse’ analytical findings are doing nothing to protect the safety of horses. We hope that with this positive change, the HISA Authority will be able to focus on regulations that actually catch those they proclaim to be cheating rather than wasting valuable time and resources adjudicating irrelevant concentration findings.”
The petition cites the practices of other federal agencies using no-effect thresholds: “For example, the Department of Transportation, in its drug testing of commercial airline pilots, … allows 100 nanograms per milliliter of oxycodone. By contrast, HIWU publishes a zero-tolerance oxycodone policy.” The petition also states: “the EPA measures foreign substances in drinking water in micrograms per milliliter, or one millionth of a gram per milliliter. That is one million times larger than the picogram per milliliter level for which some HIWU laboratories are testing. The EPA recognizes that reporting picogram levels of foreign substances in American drinking water would needlessly alarm the public of the presence of foreign substances that the EPA knows have no effect.”
“Scientists know that infinitesimally small amounts of foreign substances are present throughout our world,” said Dr. Doug Daniels, National HBPA president. “In equines, they usually come from uncontrollable environmental transfers and do not affect the performance of the horse. The FTC must follow the science and adopt no-effect thresholds.”
The petition includes the stories of several horsemen whose reputations it categorizes as “smeared” by HIWU over scant traces of substances that are pervasive in the human world. Mike Lauer, 72, a licensed trainer for five decades, spent almost $50,000 and five months trying to clear his name from HIWU allegations that caused him to lose clients. HIWU eventually concluded that a groom who had ingested his prescription diabetes medication Metformin at lunch then unintentionally contaminated Lauer’s horse by touching its mouth while fitting it with a bit and bridle. Still Lauer was suspended for 75 days and fined $2,600.
The current regulatory system, according to the petition, is forcing trainers, like Rusty Arnold, “to simply admit to violations they did not commit just to get HIWU off their back.” Arnold recently accepted a seven-day suspension, a $1,000 fine, and a lost $40,000 purse for his horse’s owner for a finding of 3 parts per billion per milliliter of a metabolite of Tramadol in a urine sample. The National HBPA gathered and included in the petition signatures from over 750 horsemen who believe HIWU’s treatment of Arnold was unfair and who support no-effect thresholds.
“Horses are grazing animals. They eat dirt. They love to lick smelly wet spots in stalls. They eat manure. They lick the walls of ship-in stalls. It is unreasonable to think we can control this,” Arnold said in the National HBPA’s announcement about its petition. “I applaud the National HBPA for asking the FTC to bring some common sense and fairness to HIWU’s system of gotcha chemistry.”
The HISA Authority proposed a small number of no-effect thresholds in rule changes as recently as May, but the National HBPA said the modifications do not go far enough. The petition alleges that HISA is violating the law by not publishing no-effect thresholds for the overwhelming majority of the substances on its list of permitted substances. As a result, the petition calls for the FTC to “issue allowable limits itself to bring the HISA Authority’s list into compliance with the Act.”
“By not issuing allowable limits, the HISA Authority is flouting the law. The National HBPA calls upon the FTC to do its job to correct this violation,” said Peter Ecabert, general counsel for the National HBPA.
This press release has been edited for content and style by BloodHorse Staff.
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