MADAM - There has been an outraged response from the racing industry over the front-page Daily Mirror article (September 20) about the death of race horse Wigmore Hall.

It was a piece that featured Animal Aid’s photographs of the horse being shot in the head.

In supplying the images to the Mirror, our key motivation was to trigger a debate about the routine nature of equine deaths on British racecourses and the lengths to which the racing authorities go to conceal the reality.

Around 200 horses die on courses every year and yet the industry’s self-governing regulatory body refuses to publish clear facts about how many horses die, where they die and from what injuries.

Instead, it talks of ‘deaths per runners’.

Under this deceitful formulation, if two horses have 10 races each, and one dies, the fatality rate is logged as one death per 20 runners.

This creates the impression that one out of 20 horses has died, when in fact one out of two horses has died.

Let’s have a debate on the basis of the facts, putting the interests of race horses at the heart of the matter.

Andrew Tyler

Director Animal Aid

Tonbridge