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Tim Bonner: Public attitudes, politics and animals

The first take is not always the best one and it has been interesting to ponder on the reaction of the racing industry to the Gordon Elliott scandal and its relevance to some of the issues around hunting, shooting and wildlife management that the Countryside Alliance campaigns on.

The first thing to say is that racing, especially in the UK, has been admirably progressive in its approach to horse welfare in recent decades. For instance, on the welfare of retired horses and the Grand National, two issues that have the ability to cut through beyond the racing world, there has been significant change which has addressed fundamentally damaging publicity. The willingness to push through such change shows how aware racing is of the need to retain 'social licence', that fragile public agreement that an activity is justifiable and acceptable.

As our Chairman, Lord Herbert, always emphasises when he discusses the three Ss – 'Science, Standards and Social Licence' - that licence is not granted in perpetuity. Public attitudes are ephemeral and so the window of 'social licence' is constantly moving. It is an understanding of how particularly delicate public opinion is in relation to the treatment of animals that generated such concern within the racing industry about the photograph of Gordon Elliott sat astride a dead horse. The reaction to that photograph is not about 'science'. It does not need a vet to tell you that there was no suffering caused to the horse. It died, reportedly of a heart attack, and nothing Elliott did compromised its welfare in any way. Yet, it would have been no defence to make that point. The reaction of the public was not the result of behaviour that compromised the horse's welfare, but because Elliott had failed to uphold a standard of respect to an animal on which his own livelihood and that of the racing industry relies. And the appalled reaction of the racing industry suggests it understands that those are standards that have to be upheld if it is to retain its social licence.

Racing relies for its very existence on wide public support to fund racing through betting and racecourse attendance and is therefore more sensitive to public attitudes than activities like hunting and shooting that require no external support. All three, however, are equally vulnerable to changes in social attitudes that drive political campaigns. Racing has clearly understood that it cannot just rely on science and that its standards primarily need to reflect the attitudes of the public, not just its practitioners, if it is to retain social licence. In considering the future of hunting and shooting we need to take exactly the same approach. The question is not whether our science and standards satisfy ourselves, but whether they satisfy everyone else. As Gordon Elliott knows only too well, there is no amount of PR or spin that can retrieve the situation if they do not.

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