The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 11 August 2019 *** 13
Show is over for
horses that fail
the obesity test
By Lizzie Roberts
AN IMMACULATELY plaited mane,
polished leather saddlery and glossy
hooves will win points in show rings,
but horse owners are being told over-
weight animals will be penalised.
Show horses are often obese and are
at risk of life-threatening diseases, vets
have warned, and competition judges
have announced that mounts will now
be marked down for being “plump”.
The British Show Horse Association
(BSHA) has said its judges are now in-
structed to penalise any horses which
are overweight.
David Rendle, an equine vet, who is
on the council of the British Equine
Veterinary Association, said that
around 50 per cent of horses in the UK
were very overweight or obese and
that the showing community had con-
tributed to the issue.
“The sport of showing has contrib-
uted to the change in perception of
what horses should look like,” he told
The Sunday Telegraph.
“Vets would like to see a horse look-
ing like an athlete, but the judges ap-
pear to prefer a nice round horse,
which is what we’ve become used to
seeing in the show ring.
“To do well in a show ring, horses
have to be overweight, and most of
them are very overweight.
“Unfortunately, obesity and diseases
associated with it are now the norm in
show horses.”
Nigel Hollings, chairman of the
BSHA, said: “This has been an ongoing
problem for the past few years of obese
animals in the show ring.
“We think things have improved, es-
pecially with judges penalising animals
in the show ring that are overweight.”
In order to decide the final placings
in the ring, judges assess how well a
horse has been turned out, how it rides
or moves, as well as its body condition.
This can be to visually assess if a
horse is carrying too much weight, for
example by spotting fatty deposits
across the body particularly on the
neck, if it has an apple-shaped rump or
by looking at the size of the girth
around the belly.
“If you have an animal that’s over-
weight in the ring, it’s not going to ride
or go as well,” Mr Hollings said.
“If an animal wasn’t fat, it might
have had a better placing.”
He added that he believed the issue
stems from new owners.
Lost passports ‘sold
off in black market’
By Christopher Hope
and Mike Wright
A BLACK market for lost
British passports appears to
be escalating after HM Pass-
port Office admitted the
number of identity docu-
ments lost in the post has
leapt by 60 per cent from 281
to 447 in the past five years.
The figures are a fraction
of the 80,000 “passports and
supporting documents” sent
through the post in 2018 but
will fuel fears of the pass-
ports being sold on the black
market.
The figures released under
a Freedom of Information
Act request show that the
numbers of passports “lost
during the delivery process”
have increased from 281 in
2014 to 447 last year. By June
30 this year 220 passports
had been lost.
Last week an investiga-
tion by The Sunday Tele-
graph found genuine UK
passports for sale on the
hard to access corner of the
internet known as the “dark
web”. Vendors were selling
the documents for upwards
of £10,000 and promised
customers they would be de-
livered within four weeks.
The sellers listed the pass-
ports as “registered”, indi-
cating that they were real as
opposed to forgeries.
The dark web is an en-
crypted corner of the inter-
net where lawless market
places have sprung up sell-
ing a range of illicit products
and services from class A
drugs to hitman contracts.
A spokesman for the Home
Office, which has oversight of
HM Passport Office, said:
“The number of passports
lost during delivery is less
than 0.01 per cent of all those
sent, and passports recorded
lost are cancelled immedi-
ately. All passports are
checked when people enter
the UK by Border Force of-
ficers who are rigorously
trained to identify fraudu-
lent documents.”
Sources said details of lost
or stolen passports were cir-
culated daily via Interpol’s
database of Stolen and Lost
Travel Documents.Milka advert call for thin
girls is hard to swallow
By Alex Shipman
A CASTING call seeking a
thin young girl with “very
good teeth” to star in a Milka
chocolate Christmas TV ad-
vert has been criticised by
health campaigners.
The request for child ac-
tors to play the role of “Mia”
asked for “no red hair” and
for the girl to be no older
than 12 so she is “childlike”.
It insisted “no overweight
children as this is advertis-
ing chocolate”.
The advert was published
on Spotlight, a talent agency
which helps performers find
employment, and later on
Twitter.
A spokesman for Action
on Sugar, a health campaign
group, said it was “sure the
Advertising Standards Au-
thority would not stand for
this”.
Spotlight released a state-
ment on Twitter, saying the
call is “totally unacceptable”.
A Mondelēz International
spokesperson said: “We’d
like to thank people for
bringing this casting notice
to our attention.
“We take our advertising
responsibility very seriously
and this is not representa-
tive of the brief we shared
with the casting agency
and does not meet our high
standards.
“We would never approve
the use of such a notice, and
are urgently reviewing the
situation with Spotlight UK
to understand how and why
it has happened.”News
Neck – With a
“cresty neck”,
fat will protrude
over the top.
Shoulders- Definition of
the neck into
the shoulder is
lost.
Withers – At
the top of the
withers, there is
significant fatty
cushion.
Ribs – You
can’t see the
horse’s ribs.
Hindquarters - A horse’s rump
should be a
sweetheart
shape, but when
this shape
becomes more
apple-
bottomed, it is
overweight.
Weight to go
How to
check if
your horse is
too heavy“I think that showing has become a
hobby,” he said.
“It’s a lot more accessible to a lot
more people, there is a lot more variety
of food stuff for horses and ponies, and
I think it was the lack of education on
how to feed an animal.”
Overweight horses are at increased
risk of life-threatening diseases, such
as laminitis which causes swelling and
inflammation of the attachments that
connect the hoof to the bone within it.
The damage results in the hoof de-
taching from the bone, like a fingernail
being pulled out, and ultimately
the bone can fall through the bottom of
the hoof.
“Laminitis is one of the most com-
mon reasons for euthanasia in horses,
particularly show horses, and it is to-
tally avoidable,” Mr Rendle said.
“It’s almost normal on show yards
for laminitis to occur.
“Not only is obesity normalised, but
this serious disease, which comes with
obesity, has also been normalised. That
is a travesty for equine welfare.”Game on A gamekeeper in the Yorkshire Dales lets his dogs loose yesterday, before the “Glorious Twelfth” tomorrow.
The date marks the official start of the grouse shooting season and is one of the busiest in the game calendar.ROGER MOODY / GUZELIAN220
The number of passports
that have gone missing
during delivery this year
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