“Shut Up and Take the Money”
In horse racing, we talk a lot about the “finish line.” But for the horses, the real race starts when the gates of the track close behind them for the last time. We call it aftercare. We call it a “social responsibility.” But when you look at the fine print of the agreements governing the organizations tasked with this “noble” work, it looks a lot less like a mission and a lot more like a gag order.
First, I support the TAA. I always have. You can support an organization and not agree with everything they do and the same can be said for an individual. You can also be cognizant of their reasoning and the quandary that forces decisions they make. That doesn’t make them right and you wrong however.
I’ve been digging into the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance (TAA) accreditation and grant language. Most of it is standard—insurance requirements, logo placement, the usual bureaucratic hoops. But then you hit the wall of the “Promotion of Accreditation and Grant” section, and the air gets very thin.
The language is explicit: Grantees must “at all times portray a positive outlook of Thoroughbred aftercare and the racing industry” in all media, social media, and interviews. It goes further, prohibiting any discussion of the industry or its participants “negatively or in any manner which could reasonably be expected to portray them in a negative light.”
Let’s call this what it is: a “shut up and take the money” clause. One has to wonder how much of this gag-order language was penned in the wood-paneled offices of The Jockey Club, the TAA’s largest financial benefactor. If they are the ones signing the biggest checks, are they also the ones handing the TAA the duct tape for the mouths of these rescues?
The Cost of Silence
In a previous column, I argued that if The Jockey Club (JC) can’t solve the aftercare crisis, they should hand the keys over to Mike Repole and let someone with actual skin in the game try to fix the room. The TAA was birthed by the “Big Three”—The Jockey Club, Breeders’ Cup, and Keeneland. These are the pillars of our sport, the self-appointed guardians of the “Sport of Kings.”
But how do you honestly advocate for a horse in a kill pen without pointing out the systemic failure that put him there? How do you “bring awareness” to the aftercare crisis if you are contractually forbidden from acknowledging there is a crisis? I don’t know, do you? In a nutshell, we need all the accredited rescues we can get, but only if they say what we want.
If a rescue organization sees a pattern of neglect or a loophole in the system that is costing lives, they are the front-line soldiers. They have the data. They have the scars. But under these terms, if they speak the truth—a truth that might “portray the industry in a negative light”—they risk their accreditation and the very grants that keep their hay sheds full.
That isn’t a partnership; it’s a ransom.
Transparency or Deception?
The industry is currently screaming for transparency. We have HISA, we have betting integrity audits, we have endless seminars on “public perception.” Yet, the TAA—the gold standard of aftercare—requires its beneficiaries to act as PR agents for the status quo.
The hypocrisy is deafening. We acknowledge that mustangs and quarter horses might outnumber Thoroughbreds in the “slaughter pipeline,” but that is a deflection. This is a billion-dollar industry. We have the resources. What we lack, apparently, is the stomach for the truth.
By forcing rescues to “portray a positive outlook,” the TAA is effectively sanitizing the struggle. If every accredited rescue is forced to smile for the camera and say the system is working perfectly, the urgency for reform vanishes. Why would a donor or a legislator feel the need to push for change when the “official” word from the front lines is that everything is sunshine and roses?
The Irony of the Logo
The agreement states that if accreditation is revoked, the organization must scrub the TAA logo from their website and physical location immediately. It’s a mark of “integrity” that can be snatched away the moment you stop being a “team player.”
Censorship in aftercare is a betrayal of the horse. You cannot fix a problem you are forbidden from describing. If we are failing to self-police, if we are failing to take care of our own, the solution isn’t to silence the witnesses—it’s to change the behavior.
The Jockey Club and its partners claim to be leaders. Real leadership doesn’t require a non-disparagement clause. Real leadership invites the hard conversations because that’s the only way to find real solutions.
If the TAA wants to truly honor the Thoroughbred, they should start by letting the people who save them speak the truth. Until then, “accreditation” is just another word for “compliance.”
And in this industry, we’ve had enough of the “everything is fine” narrative while some horses pay the price. It’s time to clear the room and let the truth back in. I stand with the TAA and their goals, but censorship, especially at the potential cost of even one horse doesn’t pass the test.
Silence is not always golden:
You don’t have to be accredited to save horses:
