A shocking report predicting 13 thousand horses will have to be put down if the horse racing industry goes bust.

The report by a government panel says with the province ending a revenue sharing deal with
racetracks,  three quarters of the tracks in Ontario will close.

Jim Thibert with Fort Erie's Live Racing Consortium tells 610 CKTB's Tim Denis he doesn't know where the 13 thousand came from but he's certain a large number of horses will have to be euthanized or taken out of racing totally.

Thibert says the problem is the industry looks at  horses as athletes and has never had to consider what would happen to the animals if live racing were to end.

He says most owners have a stable of  10 or more horses because they can only race once every two weeks or so.

And he adds it costs about 75 dollars a day to keep a horse, so that's why the purses have to be enough to cover the expenses.

If racetracks can't pay high enough purses than owners can't afford to keep the animals.

In the end, Thibert doesn't know how well the public will accept the culling of racing horses because this situation has never happened before in the history of the sport.