World Bitless Association to meet with FEI
By Equestrian Life
It has been announced that the World Bitless Association (WBA) will be meeting with the FEI later this year. The organisation, which is the only global equine welfare charity that represents the Bitless community, received an invitation from the FEI to attend a meeting in Switzerland after Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted.
The WBA’s aim is “…To improve welfare for horses through the promotion of evidence-based, benign, horse-friendly training, by helping to develop opportunities for competent balanced riding and by ensuring equal opportunities are established for all equestrians to compete, whether they choose to ride Bitless or Bitted.”
The FEI have indicated that they want to discuss the organisations’ “common drive to improve equine welfare standards and public perception of horse sport”. The meeting has been welcomed by the WBA as a valuable opportunity to generate dialogue between the bitless community and the FEI.
The invitation has been in response to WBA’s campaign “Why NOT Bitless for XC Eventing”, which was set up in an attempt to prevent the 2019 ban on bitless bridles in the cross country phase of eventing for “risk management reasons”. The ban went ahead, and the 2020 FEI Eventing Rules were subsequently updated. At the time, the United States Equestrian Federation and The British Equestrian Federation were the only National Federations to support the WBA campaign. According to WBA, Equestrian Australia was one of the primary instigators of the ban.
The WBA are now calling on those in the bitless community to have their say via this short survey, so they can take your views to the FEI meeting.
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