Quote:
Originally Posted by keenan 
The loss of any sort of life is tragic, relatively speaking, for people to get all up in arms over the loss of 3 horses over an 18 month period is ridiculous in my opinion, and these horses were probably treated a hell of a lot better during their life than most of those other 125,000.
The loss of any sort of life is tragic, relatively speaking, for people to get all up in arms over the loss of 3 horses over an 18 month period is ridiculous in my opinion, and these horses were probably treated a hell of a lot better during their life than most of those other 125,000.
First of all, they're not mutually exclusive. One can be unhappy about the loss of the horses on the show and racing industry.
Second, the absolute numbers of injuries aren't useful without knowing the percentages/per capita. To compare three injuries versus "thousands" tells little unless you know how many horses are involved. If Luck used three horses and all three horses died, that's a 100% fatality rate. That would be a terrible statistic regardless of how small that number is. Yes, it's true the horse deaths on Luck have garnered a lot of attention - things that involves television and well-known actors tend to do that. But a very good, legitimate reason for the attention is that, while animal injuries in racing may be commonplace, it's highly unusual on a television set.
Third, what's the relevance of the number of injuries in the racing industry to the question of animal safety on a TV set? If you're trying to figure out if there are too many car accidents on the 405 freeway in LA, you don't use the accident rate in Formula 1 races as a benchmark. As best as you can, you try to compare like-to-like which, in the case of Luck, means other TV and movie productions that used horses. Two recent examples are the movies War Horse and Secretariat. Neither of them had a single death or injury. There was a show called Wildfire a couple years ago that ran on ABC Family for four seasons/52 episodes that involved horse racing. How many injuries on that set?
Finally, it's misleading to describe Luck's production as having taken place over an "18 month period." While that may have been the entire span of the production from beginning to end, it's not particularly useful to the question of whether the fatality rate for animals on set was unusually high. Luck didn't shoot every day during that entire period and even when they did shoot, they didn't shoot every day with the horses. The relevant data would be to know how many shooting days there were with horses. It's hardly a surprise that no horses died on set during those days when they shot Dustin Hoffman's scenes with Nick Nolte.
I get why, if you're a fan of the show or horse racing, you might be upset at this abrupt cancellation or think three horse deaths isn't a big deal. But it's unfair to say three horse deaths on set is acceptable because horses die all the time in racing. Two different worlds, two different levels of tolerance. And it's got nothing to do with PETA. Long before PETA existed, TV and movies have had standards and practices that set zero animals injuries not only as the goal but the norm.
. But I think you get my point.
Thanks!
Man I can't stand their TACTICS.
