The grand National has been run once again - and once agaain there is a trail of dead and dying horses littering the track at Aintree, proof positive if ever we needed it that that when it comes to money over welfare, money wins hands down every time.

The problem is though that what we see at Aintree each year is really only the tip of the iceberg. National Hunt racing is notoriously dangerous (for the horses at least) - particularly those tracks that feature the really big jumps over which fields crammed with horses atempt to 'jockey'. While with each year there is always a brief outcry following the National as a few horses deaths make the headlines, what we don't hear about are the shootings day after day that occur on tracks around the country of lesser note.

Anyone who has any experience of horses will know what I mean when I say that horses are so willing, so trusting, that they are prepared to do what is asked of them (mostly) without hesitation and without complaint. So the responsibility is with us and us alone to ensure that these fine animals are not placed into situations where their lives are unduly at risk just to satisfy a 'spoting urge' or 'financial interest' that we may have. The onus must be on us to ensure their safety in situations where they cannot do this for themselves.

If the National is to be allowed to continue something must clearly be done to reduce the danger to the participating horses and two suggestions I read recently would seem to make good sense. Firstly the field size should be reduced from 40 to 30 giving more space for horses to properly prepare and position themselves for the jumps and secondly the 'drop' of 25cm on the far side of the Beechers Brook jump should be levelled out. This drop serves no purpose other than to make the jump more dangerous - increasing the 'thrill' of the spectacle at the expense of horse safety and introduced in a time when views on animal welfare were much less enlightened. Lets lobby for this. Someone start a Facebook page (or whatever it is that is done now) to highlight our - the concerned public's - statement that this cruelty must stop!