National HBPA: Science-Based Screening Levels Needed

Screening levels based on science for post-race testing are essential for the integrity of horseracing—as is public information about how such policy is made. That was a major takeaway from the Kent Stirling Memorial Medication Panel on the second day of the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association conference March 8 at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans.

With today's super-sensitive testing capabilities, the National HBPA has long advocated for scientifically developed screening and threshold levels to determine if a positive finding is a legitimate rules violation or if a negligible amount was inadvertently transferred to a horse through contamination at a level with no pharmacological impact on the animal's performance. The topic has added urgency with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority taking over equine-testing policy and enforcement as early as March 27.

HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus has said trainers will not be penalized nor horses disqualified for irrelevant trace levels of substances readily found in the environment. According to the National HBPA, there is nothing in HISA's proposed medication and drug rules that state that.

"The scariest thing for me is when somebody who is in a position of authority—a regulator, a prosecutor—says, 'Just trust me. I know what I'm doing. Just trust what I'm doing,'" said El Paso attorney Daniel Marquez, whose law practice includes representing horsemen in the Southwest.

Bringing sensitivity into sharper focus, drug-testing and toxicology expert Dr. Steven Barker—now an Emeritus Professor at Louisiana State University after retiring following years as head of its state equine drug-testing lab—used an example of bufotenine, which can be detected in horses' post-race tests if (among other things) they eat hay with reed canary grass in it.

He noted some drug positives could be called based on minute levels when an effect of a drug would be relatively nonexistent.

"So, using science, coming up with reasonable levels to call positives that really do meet their mandate, is what HISA should be doing," Barker said. "I don't know that they will. I certainly hope they do."

Dr. Clara Fenger, a Central Kentucky-based veterinarian with additional degrees in internal medicine and equine exercise physiology, started a panel with some statistics. She noted that while violations in human sports were down 1.19% from 2013, U.S. horse racing rose to 0.43% of positive findings from 0.34% in 2013. While she said those rates still reflect very few "true" attempts to cheat, in her words, she said the bump in horse racing is explained by labs using increased sensitivity to find irrelevant minuscule levels of substances that would not be called positives in human testing.

Fenger said labs that will enter into contracts to do testing for HISA must be able to detect substances down to a specified minimum level, known as Minimum Required Performance Levels. However, the lab can elect to call a positive finding at any level below that minimum, she said, adding that flies in the face of HISA's mission of bringing uniformity across all racing jurisdictions.

"For substances that reflect actual cheating, this is a great system," Fenger said. "Because if one lab can find it really, really low, they can share their methods with other laboratories and they can all find it better... But for therapeutic medication, this represents a huge difference in regulations state to state, depending on the laboratory doing the testing."

Dr. Thomas Tobin—longtime consultant to the National HBPA, a veterinarian, and renowned equine pharmacology and toxicology expert at the University of Kentucky's Gluck Equine Research Center—shared a couple of unusual cases illustrating how tiny levels of substances can transfer to a horse without direct administration.

Marquez also critiqued HISA for limited transparency, calling it a private organization (though under oversight from the Federal Trade Commission). 

"With HISA and the reliance on individual labs, some of which are private, we lose part of that arm of accountability. Private labs are not subject to those (Freedom of Information Act) laws or state open-record laws," he said.

The conference's panels and presentations conclude March 9.