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BY PHILIP ELLIOTT
Senior Correspondent, TIME |
Aidan Butler didn’t want to wear a suit. It wasn’t his vibe. A self-described third-generation bookie from England who happens to run the California horse track where the United States will host the 2028 Olympic Games’ equestrian events was eager to hit up Capitol Hill offices last month and make the case for new restrictions on what happens when those horses’ days are done. But he was going to wear denim. And boots. And no tie. Washington—what with its byzantine rules and aggressive gridlock—would not box him in. |
Butler is the new, pugnacious face of a truly odd coalition that's lobbying Congress and the White House to ban the export of U.S. horses for slaughter in Mexico and Canada for human consumption. It's an arcane crusade that might be actually on the verge of finding success, as animal rights advocates join online gambling and crypto-currency players, environmental and agriculture constituencies, and even brick-and-mortar casino fans get behind a bill to block what's widely regarded as an unseemly business that turns 25,000 U.S. horses each year into food on the cheap. |
As head of 1S/T, the dominant online and on-site horse-betting tech firm in the country, Butler has a privileged position to bully his fellow race-track chieftains to join his position against allowing end-of-the-line horses to be shipped off to be made into meat. And he is warning his colleagues about the dangers of the industry ending up on the wrong side of the issue. After all, the 2013 documentary Blackfish tanked SeaWorld for years in the wake of that film showing the bleak conditions facing captive orcas. |
“Everyone involved in racing shares responsibility for these horses, not only during their careers, but long after,” he wrote in a letter sent Thursday to horse racing industry leaders and obtained exclusively by TIME. “The era of ‘business as usual’ is over. This is a business, but it is also a responsibility that requires integrity and a clear commitment to doing right by these animals. Only when we account for our horses beyond racing can we truly claim to protect them.” |
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Leading up to that message, Butler wandered the halls of the U.S. Capitol on March 26 to boost a measure that has stealthily picked up enough co-sponsors in the House—especially from Western states—to force it to the floor if lawmakers really wanted to push it. On the Senate side, the numbers are smaller but the coalition is just as odd; the co-sponsors include Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, and Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican. |
Between meetings with lawmakers and their staffers, Butler hectored fellow track masters that either they join him at the starting gate or face his ire. The calls, according to people who overheard them, were not always amicable. |
“There’s a public and social license when using animals for sport. And if we don’t address problems, you lose the support of the public because you’re not doing the right thing when you get the opportunity,” Butler tells me in a dismal House-side cafeteria on Capitol Hill. “When you find a loophole like this, it’s one that needs to be shut down quickly. … None of us are going about businesses with horses in the future if we don’t do the right thing.” |
The measure is gaining steam behind the scenes, thanks in no small part to Butler’s quiet control of the brand behind the Maryland-based Preakness Stakes coming in May. Adding to his cache, the suave Brit has control over the Santa Anita sites in California that will host the Olympics in two years out West. And he has a give-no-Fs persona that might spook competitors into pressuring lawmakers to help stamp out a shadow economy that the genteel horse racing industry is often reluctant to talk about. |
“This isn't a real business, by the way,” Butley says. “This isn't huge like the global beef market. This is not that. This is a bunch of unscrupulous people looking for a buck.” |
It seems like an easy lift from the most public part of the horse-racing industry—the marquee tracks. The smaller pieces—the petting zoos, the amateurist pens, the training lawns where horses in retirement also face injury and end-of-life choices for their owners—are secondary issues but ones that nonetheless contribute to the grist of animals who have few options open to them once their competitive racing days are over. Butler, in our conversation, likens it to someone who sells a car and finds out nine owners later it has become a shell of its former iteration. There’s no good way to send an injured horse to a junkyard like it’s another past-its-prime clunker. |
“The question is not how many we can save, but how many we never see,” Butler wrote. |
On Capitol Hill, the question is actually how this gets into law. Despite seeming to have a coalition in the making—and who wants to run for re-election in support of putting Secretariat into a meat grinder?—things are still gummed up there. |
Rep. Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat who has been a leading advocate on the issue for years, says the SAFE Act is a standalone bill, but may find better traction added to another measure. “There's so many things floating around,” she says. “You’ve got a reconciliation. You got a bill at the end of the session that we’re hanging a Christmas tree on. It could be an amendment to some appropriations bill. We'll look for any vehicle.” |
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She adds what should be common sense: “In these difficult times, maybe there's something we can agree on. It should be animals.” |
But here’s the thing about every issue here in Washington: for everyone lining up on a seemingly easy issue, there’s someone with something to lose. In most cases, it’s a zero-sum game and there will always be someone working from a deficit. It’s why folks like Butler and his partners in the advocacy world—including celebrities in the Taylor Sheridan universe and Olympians like Jessica Springsteen and Karl Cook—are pushing for something to move quickly. |
“It feels like there's a different level of groundswell,” says Ashley Avis, the director of Disney’s 2020 film Black Beauty who became an equine activist as a result. “To have people like Aidan Butler and 1S/T getting behind this and saying, ‘We're gonna be vocal opposition. We're not gonna just say we sponsored the SAFE Act.’ They're getting in the ring with us. And we need those heavy hitters to say this is wrong.” |
But it’s still Washington. And it’s not like Congress is exactly fertile ground, even for bipartisan legislation like this matter with horses. The closer we get to full-speed campaign season, the tougher everything is going to feel. It’s precisely why Butler does not see the value in trying to fit his pitch to Washington, but could rather bend it with his indifference to it. |
“I don’t remember the last restaurant I went to and horse was on the menu. It’s not an American delicacy,” Butler says between meetings on the Hill. “So why do we allow American horses to be shipped off like this?” Because somewhere here in D.C., someone has been convinced inaction is safer for lawmakers. |
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