If you’ve ever grumbled about the $15 USEF drugs and medications fee you pay at the time you enter a horse show, you may have wondered how much that fee adds up to for US Equestrian and how that money gets spent.
Drugs and medications testing is part of USEF’s commitment to protecting our equine partners and creating a level playing field for all participants. Last year, we conducted testing on 623 competition days from our 2,100 licensed competitions and collected 11,546 samples.
In 2025, the fees collected throughout the year brought in $5.77 million, which is used to fund the costs of the testing program.
Like everything else, the cost of testing samples has gone up over time. Urine, blood, and hair taken from participating horses is tested against an enormous catalogue of chemical compounds and any findings that may violate rules undergo additional testing to confirm the presence of a substance. Those samples also have to be shipped to the lab and tracked throughout the process, necessitating time and costs beyond just the time the substance spends in a testing instrument. There are also materials costs for sample collection equipment. The annual contract for our lab was $2.36 million in 2025.
You can learn more about the testing process in this article from August 2025.
There are also costs associated with the sample collection. USEF contracts with veterinarians and technicians who can attend the events selected for testing to get samples collected, appropriately recorded, and shipped. The process of sample collection can often take a full day for a team of four people to collect 18 to 20 samples. Those sample collection teams include one veterinarian and three technicians. Besides the cost of their time, the collectors are also responsible for insurance that covers their work and travel expenses, which is factored into the rate they are paid. The cost of sample collection last year was $1.4 million.
There are other costs associated with the program, too. Our Drugs and Medications office has a small, full-time staff who coordinate testing and related research, handle the work associated with positive findings, and field member questions about testing and medications rules. The office receives around 40 calls and 10-20 emails from members per day. The fee also funds our biosecurity and equine health staff, who implement policies to keep horses and competitors safe during severe weather and disease outbreaks. The annual cost of all our full-time veterinarians, staff, the office, travel, and the insurance they require related to veterinary practice, is $842,000. There’s also time from other USEF departments spent on rulebook maintenance, communications, information technology, and human resources to keep things functioning and to keep members and committees up to date with needs and changes. The Legal and Regulations team also devote time to case resolution in drugs and medications findings. Last year, the Regulations department processed 308 drugs and medications cases.
There is also $352,000 in passthrough fees for FEI testing. These are collected by USEF at FEI levels and competitions held in the U.S. and are passed on to the international governing body to pay for their testing process, which is separate.
Even with over 11,000 samples collected last year, the vast majority of participants in licensed events aren’t selected for testing. Testing includes both intelligence-based testing, random testing, and testing based on competition placing. This is similar to the model used in horse racing and for human athletes – keeping costs attainable by testing an unpredictable portion of competitors, encouraging everyone to be compliant with rules because they don’t know if they will be tested or not.
We’re often asked why the cost of the testing isn’t charged only to the participants who are selected for testing, and the reason is twofold: for one thing, allocating the costs this way would mean a much larger, unforeseen bill for someone when they are selected for testing. For another, the existence of the testing program benefits all participants, including those who weren’t tested in a given year, because it’s designed to ensure a level playing field for everyone.
These figures come from the independently audited financial statements US Equestrian is required to publish each year. Those are available in the For The Record portion of our website here.