Main Danish stud Helgstrand Dressage has offered “issues of growth” round its industry behavior and animal welfare – forward of the printed of a tv programme filmed via an undercover reporter posing as a groom.
The next day (22 November) Danish tv manufacturing corporate TV2 will air the Operation X documentary The Secrets and techniques of the Horse Billionaire, according to pictures filmed with a hidden digicam at Helgstrand Dressage.
In June H&H reported that the stud had began criminal complaints in opposition to TV2 to dam the printed, owing to the “journalistic strategies” used. On the time Helgstrand Dressage founder and Danish workforce rider Andreas Helgstrand issued a remark condemning the name of the game filming – and stated that the privateness of the stud and body of workers were “violated only to create an exhilarating documentary”. TV2 informed H&H it had introduced Andreas Helgstrand the risk to observe the “related segment of the clandestine recordings”.
A spokesman for Helgstrand Dressage issued an additional remark on 13 November, the day ahead of the overall courtroom listening to, pointing out that hidden cameras must be the “last item you do when you want to discover a case” – and that had the stud been approached via TV2, they might have allowed the manufacturing corporate inside of. The remark added that whether or not they received or misplaced the case, they’d “realized so much”.
“That being stated, we’re absolutely mindful that the dialogue of the printed has already began a debate about animal welfare and the training of elite horses,” stated the Helgstrand spokesman.
“It is a crucial debate, the place we at Helgstrand Dressage have so much to be told. As one of the vital global’s maximum recognised coaching centres for dressage horses, after all there are nice calls for that we paved the way and set new requirements for the trade.”
The spokesman added that “according to the complaint, amongst different issues” Helgstrand Dressage had performed an unbiased criminal investigation of the corporate’s industry behavior, “simply as now we have completely in comparison our follow and interior pointers” to the Danish Animal Welfare Act, the Danish equestrian federation’s moral pointers, and the FEI’s code of behavior.
“By contrast background, now we have offered a lot of measures and issues of growth for our industry, animal welfare, and stipulations for our staff. A number of of the ones adjustments are main within the trade nowadays,” stated the spokesman.
The measures were set out on Helgstrand’s website online, the place the educational of horses, animal welfare, industry behavior, worker running prerequisites and trade requirements were addressed.
Discussing the educational of horses, the remark reads that as “one of the vital global’s maximum recognised coaching centres” for dressage horses, Helgstrand Dressage is devoted to coaching elite horses below the “easiest conceivable prerequisites for our staff and horses” – and that each one remedy of the stud’s horses will have to be performed with “wellbeing because the best possible precedence”.
“When coaching an elite horse, other coaching strategies can be utilized. It’s our process to make sure that those are used appropriately. If we’re offered with clips that display that we don’t seem to be adhering to our pointers, we will have to after all rectify this. However let there be unquestionably that psychological or bodily abuse of horses has all the time been prohibited at our corporate,” it reads.
“We have now taken the complaint of our corporate severely. We have now completely reviewed our paintings processes and offered quite a lot of measures. We don’t seem to be handiest dedicated to complying with present regulation, however try to set upper requirements for the trade – whether or not it’s our paintings with horses, our industry practices or the prerequisites for our staff.”
In an additional Helgstrand Dressage remark on Friday (17 november) a spokesman stated that the stud didn’t trust the courtroom’s determination to permit the programme to be aired – and reiterated that they didn’t imagine it was once truthful on their body of workers that hidden cameras were used.
“There will have to be unquestionably that it’s completely central to us that our horses thrive, and we put animal welfare above the whole thing else,” stated the spokesman.
“Dressage as an trade remains to be growing, and dealing with horses at an elite degree calls for so much from each rider and horse. With that stated, our horses can’t be world-class if we don’t deal with them like this. Animal welfare is subsequently a best precedence at Helgstrand Dressage. We take that very severely – each now and sooner or later.”
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