Some vegans began their journey after realizing the basic math of the horse racing industry (and the dog racing industry) clearly demonstrates the massive number of you animals that disappear in their first or second year of life. The phrase ‘we cannot all be winnings’ has an extremely morbid ring to it in these industries. Race horses and racing dogs are selectively bred to be very high strung and fast. People pay large amounts of money to buy ‘promising’ animals that they expect to generate big winnings for them. They pay large amounts of money to trainers who claim to be able to extract the maximum performance possible from these poor animals. Then their racing careers begin.
It quickly becomes painfully obvious to the owners/investors that only one in thousands of animals is a winner. And the owner/investors are backing losers. The animal’s brief racing career comes to an end. And since there are thousands of these unsuccessful would be racers, the industry looks for options to dispose of these poor young animals. There are many rescue operations that try to offer care to these unfortunate animals, but not nearly enough to cater for the massive problem the racing industry creates every year. Very few people will take on ex-racing animals as pets because they are so high strung. And in the case of racing dogs they have been specifically trained to chase fleeing animals. This is not a habit that can be easily broken.
Hence when Ascot or the Melbourne Cup is mentioned in vegan circles, vegans do not think of a day out wearing big hats, they are simply reminded of the cruelty the racing industries are built on.