| INDUSTRY |
ISN’T IT TIME FOR A EUROPEAN-WIDE THRESHOLD TESTING PROTOCOL?
I
t was a cruel twist of fate, in a year already overshadowed by the spectre of COVID-19, when another biosecurity scare threatened to cast the longest shadow over the blighted 2020 racing season. On the eve of its biggest racing weekend of the year, French racing authority France Galop announced that five horses had recently tested positive for zilpaterol, a synthetic substance used to promote muscle growth in beef cattle, which is licenced in the United States and other countries for agricultural use but widely banned in Europe. The common denominator was quickly determined to be their feed: all the positive samples were taken from horses fed on GAIN Equine Nutrition—the equine feed brand of Glanbia, an Ireland-based global nutrition group with operations in 32 countries. Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien and his two sons,
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Joseph and Donnacha, who use GAIN products, were forced to withdraw all of their runners from Longchamp, including four horses that were due to run in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. The culprit turned out to be a contaminated feed ingredient— cane molasses, which was supplied to GAIN by a third-party supplier, ED&F Man Liquid Products (since then, it has been confirmed by the British Equestrian Trade Association that cane molasses containing zilpaterol supplied by ED&F Man had been supplied to a further half-dozen feed companies in the UK, although at lower levels than was the case in Ireland.) But the scandal has massive implications for the industry beyond O’Brien’s four non-runners in the €5 million European showpiece and raises questions about biosecurity and testing procedures in general, as well as about the sensitivity and specificity of testing apparatuses across different racing jurisdictions, both in Europe and beyond.