RSPCA Victoria has released an audit of the publicly available jumps racing data, finding serious animal welfare concerns, inconsistent data, and a lack of transparency.

RSPCA Victoria Policy and Advocacy Manager, Mhairi Roberts, said the report painted a very concerning picture of jumps racing.

“In defending its safety record, the public has been asked by jumps racing supporters to look beyond the last season and instead consider the long-term jumps racing data,” Ms Roberts said.

“What we found, however, was a systematic failure in animal welfare, significant gaps in data, poorly reported information, inconsistencies, and a lack of accountability and independent auditing.

“Our report found one in every 24 horses died in a jumps race this season, and one in every 10 horse starts resulted in an injury.

“Also concerning are the gaps where no data is publicly available at all – including 2010, 2011, 2020, and 2021.

“Considering the industry has been attempting to improve animal safety in jumps racing for the last 20 years, the comprehensive and accurate collection of data is essential to track improvements – yet all we have found is a disparity of publicly available and verified data over this period.

“It’s clear, even from the patchy data available, jumps racing is incredibly unsafe for horses, and that safety improvements appear to have had little to no tangible impact on horse welfare.

“Given these insurmountable animal welfare concerns, RSPCA Victoria is calling for jumps racing to be banned.”

With Racing Victoria recently announcing a review into the jumps racing season, RSPCA Victoria advocated for the review to have independent oversight.

“We are pleased this ask was successful, with the review now including an independent reviewer and a chance for the Racing Integrity Commissioner to provide recommendations,” Ms Roberts said.

Key issues identified:

• 2024 was one of the highest years of jumps horse fatalities on record.
  • In the 2024 season alone, 1 in every 24 horses died during a jumps race and 1 in every 10 horse starts in a jumps race resulted in an injury.
  • Based on available data, the horse fall rate in jumps racing has not improved in the last twenty years
  • Over the last 34 years a long-term reduction in fatality rates has not been consistently achieved with peaks every few years.
• Only 35% of complete Jumps Review Panel racing reports are publicly available from Racing Victoria since safety interventions began 14 years ago, however these reports:
  • require time-consuming manual tabulation by external parties to paint a complete picture of jumps racing,
  • contain tracked changes and some missing information indicating they may not have been finalised or adequately reviewed prior to being made publicly available, and
  • are not independently audited for accuracy
• No information on the financial or participatory status of jumps racing is available from the last 14 years:
  • Financial information for jumps racing is reported within the total figures for horse racing, rather than separated out by racing type.
  • This muddying of information also occurs for participatory data e.g. jumps racing dependent jobs are not reported separately to other racing industry jobs.
  • The 2009 Racing Victoria review is the most recent information available, which noted all key financial and participatory statistics for jumps racing were in decline, with “many in significant decline”.

For more information about RSPCA Victoria’s advocacy work visit: rspcavic.org/what-we-do/advocacy