By Dan Ross
The nation's racetracks appear primed for compliance with the first set of uniform receiving barn cleanliness, maintenance and security regulations. Just how stringent these rules will be remains up in the air.
Back in August, the TDN took a dive into the issues that stakeholders frequently raise about the nation's fleet of receiving barns. This included the potential for unclean stalls, or receiving barns in poor overall physical condition, to cause environmental contamination through left behind trace drug residues.
Last month, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) issued for public comment a set of draft receiving barn regulations, along with draft rules for the number and location of restrooms on the backside, disclosure of consumption of prohibited substances, and entering a horse on the vets' list while awaiting the results of a blood test.
Though the public comment period on these draft rules closed Monday, stakeholders can still submit recommended changes–via email at feedback@hisaus.org–for the remainder of the time the Authority will continue shaping the rules before sending them onto the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
According to HISA's assistant general counsel, Samuel Reinhardt, this could take up to a month or so. Furthermore, stakeholders will get another chance to comment when the FTC puts the draft language out for another public comment period, before formally adopting the rules.
What's currently in the proposed rules? They're broken into several areas that include the following key points:
1 – Receiving barns will be maintained in a “clean and sanitary condition,” each stall “thoroughly disinfected” after each occupancy. “After stalls are cleaned and sanitized, the empty stalls shall be secured by closing the stall doors and securing them with a serialized tamper evident security tag.”
2 – Receiving barns will be fitted with “high-resolution security cameras” to monitor the activities, including all “entry and exit points,” and “interior areas” where horses are stabled and handled. “Beginning two weeks prior to the Race Meet and continuing for the duration of the Race Meet, security cameras shall record continuously for 24 hours per day and all recordings shall be stored securely for a minimum period of 90 days.”
3 – While the physical makeup of existing receiving barns isn't addressed, it prohibits the use of wood as a surface material “in all new or renovated Receiving Barns.” The term “renovation” refers to the “refinishing, replacing, bracing, strengthening, upgrading, or extensive repair of the foundation, walls, floors, or roof systems of an existing Receiving Barn.”
4 – Receiving barns will be equipped with adequate stable room and facilities, “including hot and cold running water, and ample stall bedding.”
5 – Receiving barn access points will be controlled by racetrack security to bar unauthorized entry.
As currently drafted, if a racetrack fails to comply with the new rules, this lapse can't be considered supporting evidence of environmental contamination, “and therefore shall not on its own provide a basis for a finding of No Fault or Negligence or No Significant Fault or Negligence under the Protocol.”
If tracks violate the draft rules, they'll face possible sanctions. It's currently unclear what those sanctions will be, but they afford the Authority a “broad range of options” in terms of possible penalties.
In comparison to other leading jurisdictions–like the British Horseracing Authority which has four pages of detailed “racecourse stabling” hygiene, cleaning and use requirements–HISA's draft rules leave the requirements over what's considered “clean and sanitary” open-ended.
Alan Foreman | courtesy of Alan Foreman
“My sense is, what they are doing is the most practical under the circumstances. And it may just be a starting point,” said Alan Foreman, chairman and chief executive officer of the Thoroughbred Horsemen's Associations (THA), and ombudsman on behalf of HISA's licensees, when asked about the draft rules.
Foreman described the comparison between the U.S. system with somewhere like the UK–where all runners ship into racetrack stables mostly for just one day of racing–as apples to oranges.
“I think the more complex question is the extent to which the positive tests that are being called are the result of contamination in the receiving barns themselves. Even if there is residue of drugs in a receiving barn, is there sufficient residue that would generate a positive test?” said Foreman.
He raised the spectre of metformin, the common human diabetes drug that has been caught in the crosshairs of HISA's drug and medication control program. Indeed, as part of a study conducted at Charles Town racetrack several years ago, two receiving barn stalls swabbed positive for metformin.
Among the datapoints in the TDN's August report, of the 11 HISA-related metformin positives identified at that time, six were from ship-ins. Though in two of those 11 cases, media reports suggested that the findings were probably the result of contamination from staff hygiene lapses.
The Racing Medication and Testing Consortium's (RMTC) Scientific Advisory Committee is still in the process of conducting a review of the available science relating to metformin, including administration studies.
“If the argument being made, a defense argument that [a positive metformin test] could be coming from contamination in the receiving barn, there is now scientific work being done to establish whether or not that is a possibility. And HISA will be guided by that,” said Foreman.
“It's an extremely complex issue,” Foreman added, of the contamination debate. “But if the horsemen are going to be held to an extraordinarily high standard with respect to the operation of their stables and their barns to prevent anti-doping violations, there should be an expectation that if their horses are being placed in spaces that are not under their control, similarly stringent steps are big taken to protect them from the possibility of contamination.”
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