Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council schedules meeting to discuss Lasix phaseout

LEXINGTON, Ky. – The Kentucky Equine Drug Research Council, an offshoot of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, has scheduled a meeting for early Friday morning to discuss a proposal for a limited phaseout of the raceday use of Lasix, three weeks after the council killed the exact same proposal.

The itinerary for the meeting includes one item of discussion, the proposal to ban the raceday use of Lasix in races for 2-year-olds starting next year, with the ban extended to all stakes races in 2021. On Oct. 28, the council, by a vote of 5-3, rejected the exact same proposal, to the consternation of Damon Thayer, the state’s Senate majority leader and a member of the council.

The five votes to kill the proposal came from four practicing veterinarians and Dr. Michael Kilgore, a professor in the Pharmacology and Nutritional Science school at the University of Kentucky. The three votes in support of the proposal came from Thayer; Mike Ziegler, a representative of Churchill Downs; and Dr. Stuart Brown, chairman of the panel, who is a reproductive specialist at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute. One member of the panel, Art Zubrod, who represents Standardbred breeders, was not present for the meeting.

It takes a majority vote from the EDRC to result in a recommendation to present a proposal rule to the full Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. After the no vote, Thayer vowed to take the proposal to the commission without the EDRC’s approval, leading to more debate among members of the panel.

The use of Lasix on race day is a highly controversial topic in U.S. racing, with ardent supporters and opponents scattered throughout racing’s constituencies. Earlier this year, a group of racing companies that included Churchill Downs pledged to press for the limited phaseout in racing jurisdictions across the country, but on Tuesday, the group formally announced its agenda, and the Lasix phaseout was conspicuously absent.