The Jockey Club has every tool it needs to stop this. It knows that. So do we.
Twenty-four Thoroughbred broodmares arrived at TH Livestock in McLean, Texas on May 29. By June 8, the TAA-accredited rescue Beyond the Roses had raised enough to bail out eleven of them. The other thirteen were reportedly heading to a recipient mare farm. Then the deal collapsed. Then the USDA suspended live animal exports to Mexico over New World screwworm. And then the kill pen operator gave Gail Hirt of Beyond the Roses 24 hours to come up with the money or the mares go to another livestock auction.
As of this writing, she was $7,000 short.
Chelsea Hackbarth wrote the story for Paulick Report, and she wrote it well. The headline says everything: “The Kill Pen Debate Has An Answer For Everything Except The Horse.” She’s right. The debate has been going in circles for years: don’t pay bail prices, you fuel the market. Do pay bail prices, you fuel the market. Hold the breeder responsible. The breeder says his responsibility is “none.” The rescue network is stretched. The horses wait.
We’ve been saying something different at PTW. We’ve been saying the debate is being conducted at the wrong level because the entity with the actual authority to restructure this system isn’t a rescue organization, and it isn’t Congress, and it isn’t a kill pen operator in the Texas Panhandle.
It’s The Jockey Club.
WHAT THE RULE BOOK SAYS
All 24 of those mares have American Stud Book registrations. Every one of them has a paper trail running directly through Lexington. The Jockey Club registered every foal, collected fees on every transaction, and built a commercial enterprise equineline, Equibase, the statistics infrastructure on top of the registry data those horses generated.
We laid out exactly what TJC could do about this in precise, rule-specific detail in our piece “The Answer Is Written In Their Own Rule Book.” Rule 18 of The Jockey Club’s Principal Rules and Requirements governs the “Sold as Retired from Racing” process. It is entirely voluntary. An owner can transfer a horse, walk away, and that animal can pass through four more hands and end up in a Texas kill pen and The Jockey Club has no mechanism requiring it to know. That voluntary design is not an oversight. It is institutional blindness built into the architecture: once a box is checked or left unchecked, the registry willfully removes itself from the chain of custody.
We proposed three specific remedies: mandatory Transfer of Ownership reporting for every change of hands post-racing; an Integrity Levy on Stallion Reports and Foal Registrations to fund aftercare directly from the registry fees the industry already pays; and destination-based registration bans using TJC’s existing disciplinary authority under Rules 1(C) and 19 to penalize brokers and buyers who funnel horses into slaughter pipelines. The Jockey Club has never publicly explained why these options could not be implemented. That silence is its own answer.
Beyond the Roses is a TAA-accredited organization. The TAA, co-founded by The Jockey Club, Breeders’ Cup Limited, and Keeneland has distributed $40.74 million to accredited aftercare organizations over thirteen years. TJC touts its “$2.5 million annual contribution” to that effort.
We examined where that money actually comes from. The short version: at least part of TJC’s contribution is registry transaction fee revenue, fees paid by breeders, collected by TJC, routed to TAA, and announced as a TJC contribution. Starting January 1, 2013, The Jockey Club raised fees by $25 on nearly all registry transactions and directed those proceeds to the TAA. The breeders pay the fees. TJC calls it a contribution. Meanwhile, per the most recently filed IRS Form 990 documents, TJC carries net assets of $78.1 million and Breeders’ Cup Limited carries net assets of $101.1 million, approximately $179 million combined.
Beyond the Roses is $7,000 short of saving thirteen mares.
The math is not complicated. The will to do it apparently is.
THE BREEDER’S ARGUMENT, AND WHY IT ISN’T ENOUGH
Dr. Martin Grotheer, who is connected to all 24 mares, told Hackbarth that he was deceived, he says his nephew sold the horses to a man who promised recipient mare placements, not a kill pen. Grotheer learned they were at TH Livestock and declined to intervene. His stated responsibility: “None.”
The recipient mare market has functioned for years as a plausible exit ramp, one that allows breeders to transfer legal exposure along with the horse. It is the industry’s preferred mechanism for looking away with a clean conscience. What happened to these 24 mares is not an anomaly. It is the pipeline operating as designed.
His underlying logic on bail pricing, don’t pay, deny the kill pen operators their profit margin, let the market correct is not irrational. It’s the same argument serious horse welfare advocates have made for years. Natalie Voss examined it in her Eclipse Award-winning series. Hackbarth engages with it fairly.
The problem is that market corrections happen over time. The 24-hour deadline happened on June 14. That logic would not have helped the starfish, and it doesn’t help the horse in the kill pen.
And the structural gap Grotheer’s logic exposes is precisely what PTW has been asking The Jockey Club to close. When a breeder can say “none” and mean it legally, when an intermediary can promise recipient farms and deliver a kill pen, when a rescue organization is the last line of defense with no institutional backstop, that is not an aftercare problem. That is a governance problem. The registry is where that chain of custody begins. The registry is where it needs to be enforced.
A GRACE PERIOD NOBODY EARNED
There is a bitter footnote to this particular story worth naming. The event that softened the kill pen operator’s leverage, the USDA’s emergency suspension of live animal exports to Mexico due to New World screwworm had nothing to do with horse racing, The Jockey Club, HISA, or any industry governance body. A federal agricultural intervention gave Beyond the Roses a slightly better negotiating position on thirteen mares.
The industry got a temporary grace period from a screwworm outbreak. That is where aftercare infrastructure stands in 2026.
THE LEGISLATIVE WINDOW IS OPEN
The Van Drew-Titus Amendment, which would prohibit the transportation of horses for slaughter, passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on May 22 embedded in the Build America 250 Act. It hasn’t cleared the full House, the Senate, or a conference committee. It may not survive. The SAFE Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2002 and never made it across the finish line.
But the window is open in a way it hasn’t been in years, and it is open because outsiders Chris Heyde and Pat Cummings of the National Thoroughbred Alliance, started by Mike Repole, found the procedural door that established industry leadership never walked through in twenty years of trying.
The Jockey Club could be leading this fight from inside. It has the registry data, the legal infrastructure, the financial resources, and the institutional authority. It has chosen a different posture.
Meanwhile, Gail Hirt is checking her fundraising totals against a 24-hour deadline. The mares are waiting.
The registry tracks pedigree with extraordinary precision. The question is why accountability becomes optional where welfare begins.
If you want to help Beyond the Roses, contact Gail Hirt at gail@beyondtherosesequine.org or visit beyondtherosesequine.org.
Enough is enough!
