Loving thoroughbreds to death: conflicting values in leisure experience

ABSTRACT

Social values are thought to play an important role in determining our behaviour towards animals and other entities. In this paper, intrinsic and instrumental values for natural entities are used as the basis for discussion about the use of thoroughbred racehorses in leisure activities. Humans have divided animals into two broad, artificial groups (wild and domestic) and the entities contained within these categories are attributed with certain values. Different ethical standards for human behaviour towards animals are also applied to these two groups, which permit or inhibit the way in which they can be used. Wild animals tend to be attributed with higher intrinsic values and lower instrumental values, and they are often the subject of debates over conservation. Domestic animals are given higher instrumental value but lower intrinsic value and in recent years activist groups have exposed the horrific ways in which some of these animals have been treated.

KEYWORDS:

• Thoroughbreds
• animal abuse
• intrinsic value
• instrumental value
• ethics

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful for the comments made by the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Caroline Winter is a lecturer located in Melbourne Australia. She has an interest in the ethics of using domestic animals in the tourism and leisure industry, focusing on thoroughbred horse racing. Her earlier research was concerned with values for natural places.

Notes

1 Sprinter and Stayer are stereotypical terms used to encompass the complexity of breeding and training undertaken to “produce” a racehorse (McManus, Albrecht, and Graham 2013). A Sprinter is generally a smaller, but stronger and heavier animal, which performs best in shorter, higher speed races. A Stayer on the other hand, tends to be taller and leaner, has greater stamina and performs best in longer races (over 1200 metres) (Hamilton 2014).