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Racehorses Shouldn't Need Sex to Be Thoroughbreds, Court Told

The rule is: Racehorses must have actual sex for their foals to be thoroughbreds. In an era of widespread artificial insemination, Australian breeder Bruce McHugh says that’s wrong and has sued to void the rule in his country. If he wins, he might change horse breeding worldwide.

The requirements that horses, in effect, get a stable and go at it “are in restraint of trade” and thus unenforceable, McHugh, former chairman of the Sydney Turf Club said in a complaint filed in the Federal Court of Australia .

Artificial insemination is common in other types of breeding, he argued. Two-thirds of U.S. dairy cows and three quarters of the pigs in 2005 were produced through that method, according to Steve Blezinger, a nutritional and management consultant in Texas. Even humans use artificial insemination to reproduce without penalty.

A win “will bring thoroughbred racing into the 21st century,” McHugh said of his case, which is set to go to trial in Sydney Aug. 29.

The lawsuit is rattling a multibillion-dollar global industry, where a thriving breeding trade has developed. Each year owners of the world’s most-prized horses, including Dubai’s ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, send so-called shuttle stallions around the globe to breed with mares, collecting fees which have exceeded $330,000 per mating episode.

A court victory for McHugh could make Australia a trend- setter, tempting stud book operators around the world to follow its lead in allowing the registration of offspring from artificially inseminated mares and saving money in the process.

Shut Out?

Alternatively, if no one followed Australia’s lead, that country might find itself shut out of the racing industry.

U.S., British and other regulators might ban the progeny of Australia’s artificially inseminated mares from their tracks, said Paul Higgins, owner of Baerami Thoroughbreds in Hunter Valley , New South Wales, the world’s second-biggest horse- breeding region after Kentucky .

“I think the initial stance would be very hard,” Higgins, who has as many as 300 horses on 1,000 acres of rolling fields near Denman, New South Wales, said at his ranch home. “Things will soften very quickly, and they’ll eventually be saying we’re at the forefront.”

Higgins said he’s not taking a position in this dispute.

Horse breeders “are motivated by recognition and pursuit of prestige,” said Gerald Ng, lawyer for the Australian Racing Board Ltd. , one of the defendants in the suit. Owners had also used the breeding operations as tax write-offs, he told federal court judge Alan Robertson at a June 22 hearing in Sydney.

Guest Blog: Anne Whitfield

The eldest of seven daughters, Grace is the core of strength around which the unhappy members of the Woodruff family revolve. As her disenchanted mother withdraws to her rooms, Grace must act as a buffer between her violent, ambitious father and the sisters who depend upon her. Rejected by her first love and facing a spinster’s future, she struggles to hold the broken family together through her father’s infidelity, one sister’s alcoholism, and another’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy by an unsuitable match. From there, I co-wrote with my best friend a story for Harlequin Mills & Boon. I was terribly homesick for Australia and I used to read a lot of books set in Australia. So, naturally, our romance was set in the Australian outback. We never finished writing the story, I think boys got in the way. A few years ago my friend found our story and sent it to me. It wasn’t that bad either! I read a wide selection of books. I used to read a lot of historical women’s fiction by great authors such as Audrey Howard and Catherine Cookson, but now I read much more widely. I love historical fiction, especially medieval bio-fiction written by Elizabeth Chadwick and Sharon Penman. I also enjoy chick lit and biographies. Much of my reading is non-fiction research for my books, which I enjoy.

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