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California First to Sign Voluntary Agreement, Pay HISA 2023 Fees

The Golden State is the first jurisdiction in the country to sign a voluntary agreement with the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit (HIWU) to continue performing a host of vital roles when the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act's (HISA) drug control program goes into effect Mar. 27, according to a statement Friday by the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB).

In another first among the nation's racing jurisdictions, the CHRB also agrees to pay HISA's 2023 fee assessment. The total figure for the state is more than $6.7 million. However, after HISA's credits have been applied, the final amount that California owes HISA comes out to roughly $1.5 million, according to the voluntary agreement.

“The CHRB has been enforcing and complying with safety regulations that HISA introduced July 1, 2022. Under the new agreement, the CHRB will implement rules under the Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) Program, which are scheduled to go into effect March 27, 2023,” the CHRB's Friday statement read.

Under the voluntary agreement–shared by CHRB executive director Scott Chaney with TDN–the CHRB agrees to continue performing certain tasks for the HISA Authority and for HIWU, including the collection of equine samples, and the testing of these samples at the University of California, Davis's Kenneth L. Maddy Equine Analytical Laboratory.

In turn, U.C. Davis's “Maddy Lab” also becomes the first laboratory to officially sign onto HIWU's drug testing program.

Because state racing commissions and their respective industries already pay for many of HIWU's anti-doping and medication control program components, HISA is offering credits as subsidies to its annual fees.

According to California's voluntary agreement, the commission's total “state testing credit” will be $4.7 million. This includes some $1.2 million for sample collection and $3.5 million for laboratory costs such as race-day testing, research, and the analysis of samples from other states.

California also receives an additional out-of-competition testing credit estimated to be around $450,000 annually.

“If the costs for out-of-competition testing outside of Race Day pursuant to this Paragraph exceed $450,000 at the end of 2023, the Commission will receive an additional credit for 2024 in the amount of the excess costs,” the voluntary agreement reads.

“The CHRB is proud of our work and record in safety and animal welfare, and therefore we want to have a role in shaping policy going forward,” said Chaney in the statement issued Friday. “We have partnered and supported the national effort from the beginning and appreciate the dedication of the Authority and HIWU.”

The CHRB's statement adds: “The CHRB and representatives of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, 1st Racing, the Thoroughbred Owners of California, and UC Davis have been advising HISA all along, promoting California's strict regulatory program, and partly for that reason the federal rules are similar to those in California, meaning participants in California horse racing will need to make fewer adjustments than some of their counterparts in other racing jurisdictions.”

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Decorated My Life Video Triggers Talk of Veterinary Scrutiny Modification

Following Decorated My Life (Mehmas {Ire})'s catastrophic injury in Saturday's Sweet Life S. at Santa Anita, a 15-second video clip shared on social media that appears to show the 3-year-old filly slightly off on her right-front as she jogged to the start of the race has spurred talk of modification to the layers of pre-race veterinary scrutiny for horses that run on the track's downhill turf course.

A regulatory veterinarian is present to watch horses warm up on the level before they head up the hill—on which the Sweet Life S. was run—and then again when they get to the gate.

According to California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) equine medical director, Jeff Blea, the video appears to be from when Decorated My Life negotiated the incline on the way to post—a stage when a regulatory veterinarian can scrutinize individual horses on a TV monitor but not from the track itself.

“I spoke with the track vet and we're thinking of making a couple modifications, especially for horses that are warming up on the turf course—and the downhill turf course in particular—so maybe we can get an eye on these horses as they're going up the hill, not just on a flat surface,” said Blea, who followed-up the interview in an email with a study showing how even slight slopes can affect lameness exams in horses.

According to Blea, Decorated My Life passed multiple layers of veterinary oversight before Saturday's race, including an exam by the attending veterinarian prior to entry, another exam the morning of the race, along with regulatory scrutiny in the paddock, while warming up and behind the gate.

“She was evaluated when she got to the gate and there was no lameness present,” said Blea, about the daughter of Mehmas (Ire), trained by Simon Callaghan.

All horses entered to race must also pass the muster of a multi-person review panel who assess a horse's potential for catastrophic injury. “I was on this panel, and this horse did not present any what we consider at-risk factors,” he said.

But Blea doesn't deny the video appears to show Decorated My Life presents slight lameness in the video which was widely circulated on social media.

“What I saw is visual right front inconsistency or lameness,” said Blea, of the video. “It's a short window. It's there. You can't argue that. You can't deny that. Those are the facts.”

Dionne Benson, chief veterinary officer for 1/ST racing, said that “day-in, day-out” there are at minimum two regulatory veterinarians watching the horses on the track on race-day.

“Both vets go to the paddock. One vet then goes in the truck, follows the field. But because we realize that was a potential blind-spot, we had a camera system in the downstairs—below the winner's circle—that allows them to follow horses [on TV monitors]. But then, they could have been following a different horse when the horse was doing what is on this video. They could have been looking at a different view, a different angle,” said Benson.

Decorated My Life's jockey, Joe Bravo, was taken to hospital following the incident, and took off his mounts the following day as a precautionary measure.

“You're talking about a jockey who's not aggressive—by that, I mean he's not going to push a horse that he's not comfortable on,” said Benson. “If he didn't feel it and we didn't see in that moment what was going on—or what looked to be going on—it's very challenging to do better.”

Racing on the downhill turf course was temporarily halted in the spring of 2019, when Arms Runner suffered a catastrophic breakdown in the GIII San Simeon S. When asked if the track was considering another such moratorium, Benson pointed out that Decorated My Life was the first such injury on the course after four injury-free meets. The track also had no race-day main track fatalities last year.

“We have very strict protocols about which horses and which jockeys are allowed to go down the downhill,” said Benson. “We definitely do a good job of trying to remind the jockeys of the challenges of riding down the downhill, and that's something [ex-jockey] Aaron Gryder does very well.”

As happens with every horse that suffers a catastrophic injury in California, Decorated My Life will undergo a necropsy examination—this time at a UC Davis-affiliated facility in San Bernardino.

The CHRB will also conduct a mandatory mortality review into the incident, which includes the pulling of the horse's veterinary records and regulatory exam history, along with interviews with the attending veterinarians and other potentially involved parties.

“And then finally, the review is generally with the trainer,” said Blea. “We're taking this very seriously. One fatality is one too many. Period.”

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CHRB Emergency Rule on Compounded Drugs Geared to Shield Veterinarians

In an attempt to help shield California's backstretch veterinary community from possible further punitive actions by the Veterinary Medical Board (VMB), the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) has issued proposed emergency regulations designed to clear up discord between these two agencies about the correct use of compounded medications across California's backstretches.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines the compounding of drugs as “the process of combining, mixing, or altering ingredients to create a medication tailored to the needs of an individual patient. Compounding includes the combining of two or more FDA-approved drugs.”

The tranquilizer acepromazine is a prime example of this process, routinely compounded into liquid form to be prescribed and used on fractious dogs and horses. Other commonly used compounded medications across America's backstretches include dantrolene, used on horses that tie-up, and naquasone, for swelling.

Compounded drugs are not FDA-approved, but they are widely used in veterinary medicine provided the compounding process is done according to federal and state guidelines–a dynamic the CHRB has mirrored as a practical regulatory approach for many years, despite the existence of a state statute that essentially forbids drug compounding on CHRB licensed premises.

CHRB's Rule 1867 (b) states that “the possession and/or use on the premises of a facility under the jurisdiction of the Board of any drug, substance or medication that has not been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States.”

The California VMB interprets that rule categorically. Of the roughly 25 backstretch veterinarians currently working in Southern California, nearly all have accusations, are on probation or have record requests pending from the VMB in relation to potential Rule 1867 violations, according to the CHRB.

Last September, the CHRB issued an advisory to its relevant stakeholders stating that the agency's “longstanding interpretation” of rule 1867 “is that lawfully prescribed, compounded medications which are manufactured according to Federal and State guidelines do not violate this regulation.”

But CHRB equine medical director Jeff Blea said that the current Rule 1867 language “falls short of the intention of the rule.” It has been modified “to allow for quality standard care of racehorses by the use of compounded medications provided they are legally manufactured and prescribed in conjunction with a [veterinary client patient relationship].”

The proposed emergency rule making–one along a truncated timeline–appears geared to help shield veterinarians with pending cases by the VMB against them from a potential regulatory trap if they settle with the VMB and return to work under probation: should they then prescribe and administer compounded medications under the current Rule 1867 language, they could face stark professional consequences.

CHRB executive director Scott Chaney explained that the “sole purpose” of the proposed emergency rule making “is to clarify the language both for the vet' med' board but also for the practitioners.”

When asked if Rule 1867 (b)–adopted more than 20 years ago–should have been modified before to avoid the present professional threat that backstretch veterinarians currently face, Chaney pointed to how the CHRB has never cited a veterinarian for a Rule 1867 (b) violation, and that the board wasn't aware of the VMB filing accusations related to the same rule prior to 2020.

“Looking at it today, the easy answer is yes,” said Chaney. “But I think given it's our regulation and we were always purposeful and public about how we interpreted it, there was no reason.”

The proposed new rules modify Rule 1867 with provisions meaning that “possession or use of any compounded drug, substance, or medication, manufactured according to Federal and State laws and regulations, shall not be considered a prohibited veterinary practice” as long as no other human or animal drugs approved by the FDA to do the same job exist and are available, and that the drug is compounded by a California licensed veterinarian or California licensed pharmacy.

The proposed regulations do not differ substantially from any existing comparable federal regulations or statutes, according to the CHRB.

The CHRB has already noticed the proposed emergency regulations, giving interested parties a five-day public comment period. On Feb. 2, the board will submit them to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL). That office then has 10 days to accept or deny the proposed rules.

If the OAL indeed adopts the proposed emergency regulations in this truncated manner, the CHRB has 180 days to formally adopt the rules though its typical rule-making process. If the OAL denies the proposed rules, the CHRB can still adopt them through that normal rule-making process, but they won't go into effect until formally finalized.

The VMB, said Chaney, was involved in the drafting of the proposed regulations.

“We sent them the language we were thinking about, they made some suggestions. We incorporated a few of them but not all,” explained Chaney. “I know they discussed at their last meeting actually commenting, when they had the opportunity, on our regulation.”

The TDN emailed the VMB a series of questions, including whether the agency endorsed the proposed rules, and whether it would urge the OAL to accept or deny it. The VMB has not responded as of publication.

This action is the latest in a regulatory standoff between the CHRB and the VMB, ongoing since the VMB took the unprecedented step of suspending the license of equine medical director Blea at the end of 2021, only to reinstate his license the following September after finding him guilty of only fairly minor record-keeping offenses.

The VMB has complaints currently open against a number of Southern California veterinarians citing them for various alleged offenses beyond Rule 1867 violations, including the alleged misuse of misbranded drugs and of record-keeping offenses.

“This is the only CHRB regulation that the vet' med' board was using in its accusations,” said Chaney, when asked if the CHRB was planning on issuing other similar proposed emergency regulations.

“There are other causes of action, this just eliminated one of them,” he added. “The others the CHRB can't address, like problems with the Veterinary Medicine Practice Act and prosecutorial philosophy.”

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Overlap Between Ferndale and Golden Gate Still in Limbo

A dispute that began in October over whether Ferndale (Humboldt County Fair) will once again have to run its second of two weeks of racing at the end of August against overlapping competition from the commercial licensee Golden Gate Fields (GGF) will now likely extend into March.

There are multiple reasons for the impasse. But the two main sticking points that emerged at Thursday's California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) were:

1) The two tracks, plus stakeholders from the California Authority of Racing Fairs (CARF), Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC), and California Thoroughbred Trainers (CTT), couldn't present a unified compromise to the CHRB after being given three months to figure one out.

2) The CHRB itself failed to vote in a solution one way or the other, because two commissioners were absent from the regularly scheduled monthly meeting.

The lone motion that came up for the vote–to give Ferndale the entire two weeks un-overlapped in exchange for financial considerations to GGF that would be determined later–resulted in three yes votes and two nos.

But the results of the vote didn't count because the CHRB can't pass any measure unless at least four commissioners vote on the majority side.

“It looks like the horsemen are probably going to be getting an overdue vacation if we can't fix this,” said a frustrated CHRB vice chair Oscar Gonzales in the wake of seeing the motion he proposed fail.

Because the CHRB has already canceled its February meeting (and barring the unlikely event of an “emergency” meeting being called for in this case), the earliest the vote on the overlapped or un-overlapped week of dates could come up again is at the Mar. 16 meeting.

Back in October, the CHRB had voted in a 2023 race dates calendar for NorCal that largely mirrored the framework from the 2022 schedule.

The lone exception was that the board held off on a decision on the Ferndale vs. GGF one-week overlap. The two license applicants then requested more time to reach a compromise so commissioners wouldn't have to impose one, but their negotiations ended up not being fruitful.

On the pro-Ferndale side, testimony at CHRB meetings in recent months (and again on Jan. 19) has centered around preserving small-community racing; keeping alive the tradition of the fairs; Ferndale's stated necessity that a second week of un-overlapped racing is required for any racing there to be viable; Ferndale regularly out-drawing GGF in attendance, and the purported roles Ferndale plays in growing new fans and helping lower-level horse outfits survive.

In favor of giving GGF racing during the second week of Ferndale's meet, proponents have cited GGF's allegedly greater importance as the linchpin of NorCal racing, its ability to offer grass racing, and the additional purse money that would flow into the pockets of year-round, higher-level stables.

Commissioners have also taken note of recent upheaval and legal woes involving Ferndale. Back on Nov. 15, police arrested the fair association's bookkeeper on charges of embezzlement, and the fair association's general manager and three long-time directors have also recently stepped down.

A new GM could be in place by the end of the month, Jim Morgan, the legal counsel for the Humboldt County Fair, told the CHRB on Thursday.

“We're not against Golden Gate,” Morgan told commissioners while pleading his case for no overlap and two weeks of racing. But, Morgan added, “they do run in [10] of the 12 months out of the calendar year. So one week to Golden Gate doesn't mean as much as one week to Humboldt…

“We've been perceived as a minor-league venue and there is some truth to that,” Morgan said. “But we're also a gateway venue” that draws new fans, horse owners and horses into California's overall racing ecosystem.

Larry Swartzlander, CARF's executive director, said his organization has tried to broker a deal that gives Ferndale its solo two weeks in exchange for paying purse money to GGF.

“CARF's goal, if we get the second week un-overlapped, [is] obviously we want to raise purses at Humboldt,” Swartzlander said. “We want to make racing better. And we all understand that Humboldt is never going to have the same level of racing of Golden Gate or Pleasanton…

“CARF's position was to offer [$200,000 in purses] to Golden Gate,” Swartzlander said. “Golden Gate's counter is that they would prefer to have [bet] commissions. CARF's position is if we give up commissions [the deal] wouldn't work.”

David Duggan, the general manager and vice president for GGF, told the CHRB that, “I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel for us coming to a suitable arrangement.”

When CHRB chairman Gregory Ferraro, DVM, asked what losing that one week of racing would cost GGF, Duggan replied, “Off the top of my head, mister chairman, it would certainly be north of $250,000 [in commissions].”

Bill Nader, the TOC's president and chief executive officer, said the value of GGF's turf course “shouldn't be understated” during the summer months.

“I think it's important for the viability of Golden Gate, and also for the purse structure, that we go with the overlap of the two weeks, so we support the Golden Gate Fields position,” Nader said.

“We respect Ferndale as a complementary player in the overall landscape of racing in northern California. But in the lead role, maintaining the overlap and giving Golden Gate [that week is] important for the California horse population, for the ability to be able to run on the turf, and also for people who are supporting racing as fans,” Nader said.

“A half-mile track is something that's interesting for a short period of time,” Nader continued. “But it's not the brand that we want to present for California racing, particularly at that time of year.”

Alan Balch, the CTT's executive director, said he agreed with the TOC's position, adding that “more than anywhere else in the state, [NorCal] trainers are also owners. And we look at [being able to race at GGF] as maximizing racing opportunities.”

Commissioner Wendy Mitchell framed the question in terms of serving a constituency.

“Ferndale is a remote, northern California location [in which] there's a community concerned,” Mitchell said. “This is a fair [that] we need to be supporting, because otherwise we're leaving part of our population out in the wilderness…. And I think we need to give them the dates in order for them to [help grow the overall racing product statewide].”

Chairman Ferraro offered a counterpoint.

“The thing, Wendy, is that our constituency is really the horsemen of California. And we're talking about taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of their purse money to benefit a local fair,” Ferraro said. “That balance has got to be there. Our primary responsibility is to ensure the health and viability of racing in California, so that would concern me.”

Mitchell respectfully voiced disagreement: “I don't think it's just the horsemen that are our constituency. I think we have multiple stakeholders and constituencies here.”

The board batted around the idea of giving the two sides more time to work out a compromise. But Morgan stated that the fair's board would prefer an answer right away.

Morgan explained that Ferndale has to bring aboard a new GM, and that it would be tough to hire a competent person without being able to tell them what the budget and racing-related revenues for 2023 are going to look like. He also added that horsemen in the Pacific Northwest are now already starting to plan where they'll be racing in the summer, and delays and further uncertainty will only harm Ferndale's efforts to recruit them.

Gonzales made a motion to give the two weeks un-overlapped to Ferndale, with the understanding that Ferndale will have to “bridge the gap” financially with GGF before the March CHRB meeting.

But that motion only set off another verbal spiral over exactly what such a money compromise might be valued at. There was also talk that the current clashing offers of purse money versus bet commissions amounted to an “apples to oranges” type of comparison that benefitted nobody.

When the motion came to a vote, commissioners Gonzales, Mitchell and Brenda Washington Davis voted in favor of giving Ferndale its own two weeks without competition.

Commissioners Ferraro and Thomas Hudnut voted no.

Commissioners Dennis Alfieri and Damascus Castellanos were not present.

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