fascinating video series

Interesting but flawed in some ways:

1. These hooves don't look that fresh. The laminae start to break down fairly fast after death so this kind of experiment needs to be done within an hour or two of euthenasia to be valid.
2. Neither hoof is that healthy in terms of shape and the 'laminitic' one has more wall proud of the sole than the non laminitic one - which makes comparison tricky. We know that in the case of laminitis, peripheral loading will increase the risk of laminar failure - but that doesn't mean the laminae will fail in a healthy hoof under peripheral loading conditions
3. These hooves are cut in half - which means that structural integrity of the hoof is compromised. Feet work as a whole and cutting it in half means you're no longer testing the hoof in the way in which it works in nature.
4. The level of force being used looks excessive to me. Yes the hoof deforms quite a bit under load (especially at canter on hard ground), but from the slow motion video footage I've seen, I've never seen a healthy foot deform anywhere near that much. So if you have to load far too much weight onto the hoof to get it to fail, does that really say a lot about normal situations?

That said, I agree that peripheral loading puts more strain on the laminae. If the laminae are healthy there is plenty of redundant structure in the foot to support peripheral loading in my view. In countries where laminitis is rare, horses routinely make it through adult life in shoes with very little signs of problems due to peripheral loading. Where you DO see problems with peripheral loading is in horses that have LGL.

So basically I'd argue that the welfare issue is not so much shoeing per se but the issue of undetected LGL being rife in some countries. I'd also argue that where laminitis at any level is detected, it is not ethical or appropriate (except in very rare situations) to use shoes.

The claim that shoes are somehow unethical as a blanket statement is, in my view unhelpful and flies in the face of the many shod horses around the world that do very well in shoes. If you want to make changes that help horse welfare, these kinds of extreme positions are actually quite unhelpful in my view.