Horse slaughter exists for one reason and one reason only — to supply the demand by consumers for horse meat and make a profit from it. Although horse meat sales declined for a period of years, it became popular again in countries like France, Belgium, Italy and Japan. As demand for horse meat increased, so did demand for horses to slaughter. Horse meat is viewed as "clean meat" and a tasty alternative to beef and other traditional meats because of BSE and other contamination scares. Europeans and Asians
who consume horse flesh are willing to pay a high price for horse meat.
Butchers and purveyors describe American horse meat as the very best on
the market.
"I only buy American meat, which is red and firm. In butchering terms
we call it 'well-structured', the best you can get. Out of a thousand
animals, only the American ones are really worth buying. But they don’t
eat horse meat in America. They raise horses for foreigners."
The three remaining horse slaughter plants operating on U.S. soil were closed in 2007 by State laws. Initially, fewer horses were killed. According to the USDA, however, nearly 100,000 equines were exported from the U.S. to Mexico and Canada in 2008 for slaughter. The number increased to over 100,000 in 2009, and nearly 120,000 in 2010. Those are the ones recorded. Smuggling horses across U.S. borders for slaughter is common, especially to Mexico.
Horses are not considered traditional food animals so they are not purposely raised for slaughter. That means they must be bought. Although a few owners take their horses directly to the slaughterhouse, licensed horse dealers known as "killer buyers" frequent auctions and act as middlemen for the slaughterhouses. Mass quantities of horses are bought by these dealers at unbelievably cheap prices, who transport and resell them to slaughterhouses for profit. Auction houses and dealers do not turn away starving or severely injured horses. As long as they can keep them alive until they can get them to a slaughterhouse, these horses can be killed for their hides. They are called "skinners." Slaughterhouses typically have a tannery either on site or nearby for this reason. Statistics from one of the largest groups assisting owners in the recovery of their stolen horses, Stolen Horse International (netposse.org) show that approximately 60% of horses stolen are killed at slaughter plants.
Horses of virtually all ages and breeds are slaughtered, from draft types to miniatures, ponies and pregnant mares, even foals. Horses mostly commonly slaughtered are ones taken to livestock auctions where they also suffer in horrific conditions. They are homeless horses, unsuccessful racehorses, horses who are lame or require expensive veterinary care to return them to fitness for work or competition, mares who produce below par breeding industry standards, and foals cast off by the Pregnant Mare Urine (PMU) industry, which produces the estrogen-replacement drug Premarin®. The majority of U.S. horses going to slaughter are Quarter Horses, as many as 7 out of 10. The remainder are mostly Thoroughbreds. In other countries, the majority of horses going to slaughter are cast offs from the racing and sporting industries, 80% of which are Thoroughbreds. Most horses purchased for slaughter by "kill buyers" at livestock auctions are in good health when they are bought, usually for a couple hundred dollars, the goal being to get the most meat on the hoof.
Horses are transported, often thousands of miles, in double-decker trailers designed for cattle, in all types of weather with no food or water for up to three days. Often there is not enough clearance for the horses to hold their heads in a fully upright position. They travel this way the entire journey. No consideration is given to the gender or the condition of the horses as they are crammed into these trucks. The floors become slippery with urine, caked feces, sweat and blood. Some fall and are trampled, unable to regain their feet. Loading and unloading is extremely
stressful and dangerous for horses as they are moved along the
relatively steep ramps. They are shouted at, whipped and beaten with electric cattle prods. Canadian animal transport to slaughter standards are among
the worst in the industrialized world. European transport to slaughter standards are also deplorable.
The horses who survive the ordeal of transportation are held in pens
until it is their turn to be slaughtered. Horses are beaten and
electro-shocked from the trucks into overcrowded pens and must endure the smell of the blood and gore,
and the sights and sounds of other horses being killed, until it is their turn to die.
Under federal law, horses are required to be rendered unconscious prior to slaughter, usually with a device called a captive bolt gun, which shoots a steel rod into the horse's brain. It was common in U.S. horse slaughter plants for horses to be improperly stunned and conscious as they were hoisted up, their throats slit and bled out.
Slaughter horses are stabbed multiple times in the neck with a "puntilla knife" to sever their spinal cords. This procedure does not render the horse unconscious, and it is not a stunning method. Rather, it paralyzes the horse, leaving him/her twitching on the ground, unable to move or breathe, and then the animal dies from suffocation (because their lungs stop working) or from blood loss and dismemberment.
Horse slaughterhouses in these countries use either the captive bolt or rifle to render horses unconscious. Investigations of slaughterhouses using a rifle reveal horses shot repeatedly when unskilled workers miss their target, and horses frantically scrambling to their feet in pain and terror, trying to jump the stall to escape. The skulls of many horses discarded by a Canadian slaughterhouse showed no holes from a stun gun or rifle whatsoever.
A major misconception is that animals are stunned prior to slaughter to make the process more humane. The fact is, rendering an animal unconscious prior to slaughter is designed to protect slaughterhouse workers from the flailing limbs of terrified animals and increase their ability to handle them to speed production.
In the U.S., the number of horses slaughtered in 1990 was a staggering 350,000, a
number that dropped to an all-time low of 42,000 in 2002. Between 1992
and 1993 alone, the number of horses slaughtered dropped 79,000. These
decreases did not create a glut of "unwanted horses." Society absorbed
these horses, and the market remained stable, just as it will when
horse slaughter is eliminated altogether. In actuality, the number of horses slaughtered is based on the demand for horse meat and the number of horses the plants have the
capacity to butcher and process to meet that demand. Texas A&M, in response to this question, released a special
report on composting as a viable alternative that would be both
environmentally and politically beneficial, predicting that this could
become a big market when horse slaughter is banned.
California banned horse slaughter in 1998. California experienced no increase in abuse cases, instead seeing a decrease three years following the ban. During the four years that Cavel International was closed, Illinois saw a noticeable decrease in abuse and/or neglect cases. Texas, which had the only two slaughter plants in 2003, had among the nation's highest rates of cruelty and theft.
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