LA County DA's office joins CHRB investigation into equine fatalities at Santa Anita

The Los Angeles County District Attorney has assigned investigators to work with the California Horse Racing Board as it conducts examinations of horses that have suffered catastrophic injuries at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., the district attorney’s office said on Friday.

The assignment of the investigators was first announced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal-rights organization that is seeking a ban on racing. In the PETA release, which did not note that the district attorney’s office had assigned the investigators to work with the CHRB, PETA said that the organization first requested that the district attorney open an investigation into the deaths on March 1, citing the 20 deaths that had already occurred at Santa Anita since the track opened on Dec. 26. Two other horses have since suffered catastrophic injuries at the track since then.

PETA said that they have alleged to the district attorney that trainers have used medications to mask pain that “led to the broken bones and deaths.”

Under state racing rules, the CHRB is required to conduct necropsies on all horses that die at racetracks or training centers in the state. The necropsies include an examination of radiographs of the horses’ limbs, as well as tests for legal and illegal drugs. The CHRB has yet to announce results from examinations of any of the horses that have suffered catastrophic injuries.

On Thursday, Belinda Stronach, the president of Santa Anita’s parent company, released an open letter saying that the track would ban the use of the anti-bleeding medication Lasix on raceday and implement several other revisions to track policies, including restricting use of the whip to “corrective safety measures only.”

While the Santa Anita racing office issued an alert late on Thursday saying the new whip policy would be implemented immediately, it is unclear when the race-day Lasix ban will go into effect. Santa Anita is on hiatus from racing until March 22, and horsemen’s groups in the state are scheduled to meet over the next several days to craft their response to the changes.

PETA’s senior vice president, Kathy Guillermo, was quoted in the letter distributed by Stronach, saying that her organization supported the changes and thanking the track “for standing up to all those who have used any means to force injured or unfit horses to run.” PETA later distributed the quote used in the open letter on its Twitter account, but included an additional line that did not appear in the Stronach letter.

“Racing must go the way of the animal circus, but this will eliminate some of the misery on its way out,” the additional sentence read.

Also on Friday, Rep. Judy Chu, who represents the district that includes Santa Anita in the U.S. House of Representatives, issued a statement that said she was “outraged” by the deaths at the track, and she called on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to hold a hearing on the matter. Chu also said she supported a federal bill that was reintroduced to the House on Thursday that would appoint a non-profit, private company as the overseer of horse racing’s medication policies and enforcement.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Paul Tonko, a Democrat from upstate New York, and Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Central Kentucky. Previous iterations of the bill have never advanced beyond the committee stage, but the Santa Anita situation is expected to create a greater sense of urgency behind the bill. The bill, which bans the race-day use of Lasix, is controversial within the racing industry.