Kentucky's Equine Drug Research Council (EDRC), which serves as an advisory board to the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission (KHRC), voted 5-3 on Monday not to recommend a partial Lasix phase-out that would have barred race-day administration of the drug to 2-year-olds beginning in 2020 and eliminated Lasix usage in stakes for all ages in 2021.
Daily Racing Form's Matt Hegarty broke the story. His reporting noted that, “Of the eight members of the council, five are practicing racetrack veterinarians, and they voted as a bloc to reject the proposal….Supporters of the proposal vowed to pursue the rule change in front of the full commission…”
According to the Form, the voters in support of the Lasix phase-out were Damon Thayer, the Kentucky Senate Majority Leader and a longtime member of the council; Mike Ziegler, the executive director of racing at Churchill Downs; and Dr. Stuart Brown, a veterinarian who chairs the commission.
“I strongly urge the KHRC to consider this reasonable compromise on Lasix and adopt it at its December meeting,” Thayer wrote on Twitter after the meeting.
In separate voting, the Form reported that the council voted 6-2 “to extend a ban on the intra-articular use of corticosteroids from seven days to 14 days.” In a unanimous vote, “the council voted to extend a prohibition on the use of a single non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, such as phenybutazone, from 24 hours to 48 hours.”
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