The Association of Racing Commissioners International (RCI) board has selected five initial members for its new Drug Testing Standards and Practices Committee, a group that could eliminate or significantly reduce the current role of the industry’s Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) in shaping medication and testing policies.

The first five people appointed to the new committee are:

• Rick Sams, PhD, director of HFL Sports Science in Lexington;
• Scott Stanley, PhD, director of the University of California, Davis, Kenneth L. Maddy Laboratory;
• Mary Robinson, VMD, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania where she is co-director of the Equine Pharmacology Laboratory and director of the Pennsylvania Equine Toxicology and Research Laboratory;
• Ken McKeever, MS, PhD, FACSM, associate director of the Equine Science Center at Rutgers University; and
• George Maylin, DVM, PhD, director of the New York Drug Testing and Research Program at Morrisville State College.

The board plans to add more members to the new committee.

The RCI has asked the RMTC to merge into the new scientific board in a move the RCI says will reduce redundancy in the rule-making process. Ed Martin, RCI president, noted that committee members Sams and Stanley have served on the RMTC Scientific Advisory Committee. Robinson has conducted RMTC-funded research