The Unwanted Horse Problem and Why It’s Dangerous to Human Health

Sarah Balboni

Writing I, Gordon

Monday, December 17, 2012

The Unwanted Horse Problem and Why It’s Dangerous to Human Health

            When most people think of horses, they think of the pony rides at a childhood friend’s birthday party, the sport of king’s, or perhaps a childhood wish. If I were to say right now that somewhere in a quaint French restaurant a horse steak is being served, you may find it a little odd, but it wouldn’t upset you terribly. But if I were to bring up a street dog being served as dinner in Korea, you might find that barbaric. But horse slaughter is not just cruelty to horses, its cruelty to humans, plain and simple.

The Unwanted Horse Problem is what abandoned horses have become known as in the US. Since the closure of US slaughterhouses in 2006, horses have been turning up and deemed abandoned by authorities. Some pro-slaughter enthusiasts claim a correlation between the closure of slaughterhouses and abandoned horses, but Eckhoff offers a different solution.

There is no proof that anyone has released even a single horse because of a lack of slaughter… Horses may indeed be showing up, unaccounted for, across the U.S., but it’s just Jim Smith’s—and the pro-slaughter lobby’s—guess as to why. There could be many reasons: Job loss? Skyrocketing hay prices? Hole in the fence? The argument tying abandonment to slaughter is being used specifically because nobody knows where the horses come from. Nobody ever mentions the more likely motivation that someone might wish to avoid taking them to auction because they are afraid they will go to slaughter, or they are afraid their sorry condition will be seen and reported (WSJ serves up tainted journalism, 2012).

The pro-slaughter lobby uses the Unwanted Horse Problem (if there is one) as justification to lobby for the re-opening of US slaughterhouses to horses. Rescues may have full barns, but what rescue doesn’t? Perhaps if such people were more educated as to the future the slaughter pipeline holds for horses, they might be more opposed to it.

            Even non-horse lovers should be disgusted, the transport and slaughtering practices for horses are inherently cruel. Firstly, let’s discuss the transport of horses destined for slaughter. In 2006, slaughterhouses in the US were forced to close their doors to equines. The Mexican and Canadian borders remained open however, and thus transport practices for the horses were affected. Horses are often transported in double-decker cattle trucks, for over 24 hours at a time without food, water, or rest. The result is disturbing:

The livestock trucks were not designed to accommodate horses’ longer necks and legs and higher center of gravity. Put a horse in a cattle car, and it can’t stand upright. Imagine stallions packed in next to mares (in foal or with foals at their sides), the sick next to the healthy, all off balance, banging their heads, slipping and falling as they become more agitated, exhausted, dehydrated. Much of the resulting suffering—gouged-out eyes and gruesome head injuries, open fractures, broken legs and severed hooves, trampling and bleeding to death—has been documented by USDA photos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (Racing industry silent, 2011).

The cruelty stemming from transport could be easily regulated if the government were to step up and do so. Making the transport of equines in cattle trailers would be a start, as would mandated rest periods. The reason that horses suffer so much during transport is because it is cheaper for the kill buyers and slaughterhouses to treat horses as if they were cattle. And if the transport isn’t enough to cause outrage, the slaughtering methods will. Horses are not only transported like cattle are, they are killed as cattle too.

The kill boxes and stunning methods, too, ignore horses’ slimmer bodies and longer heads as well as their instinct to flight. Cows aren’t built for speed. Herd one into a kill box and they don’t have room to move. They’ll basically stand still. But kill boxes built for cows’ wider bodies leave horses room to thrash around, and, because they’re wearing shoes and the floors are slick with blood, there’s plenty of slipping and falling, making it very difficult for workers to get a clean shot. This is documented in nearly every hidden video [Warning: video is extremely disturbing] on horse slaughter now accessible online—and there are many.

Complicating matters, horse brains are located further back in their skulls, making them harder to knock unconscious even when a clean shot is delivered. Many regain consciousness within 30 seconds. As a result, too many end up getting shot repeatedly in the head and many are still conscious when hoisted by one leg, bled out and butchered. This is only how they do it in Canada, by the way. In Mexico, the horses are repeatedly stabbed in the spine with puntilla knives to disable them, then butchered fully awake.

They do this to all the horses—even foals, which is illegal. Compared to the slaughter of cattle, horse slaughter is relatively unregulated, and even the attendant laws to protect humans are routinely ignored. I’m talking specifically about those banning the use of carcinogenic drugs in livestock used for slaughter, such as Phenylbutazone (or “Bute”), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that racehorses are given as a matter of course…(Racing industry silent, 2011)

Screenshot from one of the undercover videos mentioned in the articles. (Retrieved from Forbes.com, see Appendix A)

            Any horse owner will argue that horses are vastly different from cattle. Dairy cows, while curious and endearing with their big brown eyes, lack the companionship qualities of a horse. Horses are used for therapeutic riding programs, and many horse owners will testify that even the most ornery of horses becomes gentle in the presence of a child or special needs person. How many of you would be willing to walk into a stable and pick out a child’s favorite lesson pony for your dinner? At some point almost every horse has been loved by a little girl, can the same be said for cattle?

            Gone are the days where horses are used to pull buggies or plow fields, today horse racing is referred to as the ‘sport of kings.’ The sport of kings they call it, with people making millions on expensive race horses that are treated as athletes. But how many of you recreational racing fans think about what happens to the horses after their racing careers are over? The trainers don’t make money by keeping has-beens as pasture ornaments, and thus many thoroughbreds are funneled into the slaughter pipeline (see Appendix B). With trailers arriving every Thursday to pick up the non-competitive horses to be auctioned off at auctions with misleading names, New Holland, Sugarcreek. Any horse can end up at an auction, but most have one thing in common

            Phenylbutazone, known as Bute in the horse industry, is a common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. So common in fact, that 90% of American horses are treated with it at least once in their lifetime, race horses especially; race horses are often given Bute before and after each race. But the drugging of race horses has further implications within the slaughter industry.

This is alarming from a food safety perspective due to drugs that are banned in animals raised for slaughter but are regularly administered by horse owners and veterinarians, including common wormers, vaccines, diuretics and analgesics… Bute is a known human carcinogen. With no acceptable withdrawal period, even a single dose in any animal sold for meat is banned by the EU, FDA and USDA. And Bute is only one problem drug, among many (Horse slaughterhouse investigation, 2012).

Equine slaughterhouses were closed in the US in 2006, but that has not prevented horses purchased by kill buyers to be shipped over US borders. Recently in slaughterhouses in Canada were closed to US horses for a brief period of time because of this issue. But the lack of regulations in Mexico means that horse meat is not safe for consumers if purchased from Mexico. And until recently, Canadian horse meat was not safe either, and probably still isn’t.

            Racehorses are the only US horses required to have complete medical histories, but finding a race horse that has never been treated with Bute is nearly impossible. With all the thoroughbreds that end up on kill-buyer trucks heading to Canada, most horses are deemed unacceptable for slaughter. However, even the requirement of medical histories experiences its failures:

The CHDC’s report reveals troubling discrepancies and missing data on Equine Information Documents (EIDs), forms that are required by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to track the drug history of horses sold for slaughter, including more than 59,693 trucked in from the U.S. in 2010. (USDA figure)

EID documents examined by the CHDC contain missing and incomplete information on the horses’ previous owners or agents and misidentification of horses in accompanying photographs (Horse slaughterhouse investigation, 2012).

            Slaughter is not a solution for the unwanted horse problem; slaughter ideally requires horses to be drug-free. But for this to happen it would require horses to be bred just for slaughter, which leaves horses unfit for slaughter in limbo. It’s not as if horse owners will stop allowing their pet’s medial care just in case they end up on a slaughter truck one day. Not everyone considers horse slaughtering practices to be cruel, but even an idiot would agree that selling tainted meat is immoral. When most people think of cruelty to humans they think of domestic abuse, war crimes, etc. But you need to consider what you’re putting on your plate and the implications of doing so. “This one should be clearly labeled for what it is: unfit for human consumption (WSJ serves up tainted journalism, 2012).”

References

Ekhoff, V. (2012, December). Horse slaughterhouse investigation sounds food safety and cruelty alarms. Retrieved from Forbes.com.

Ekhoff, V. (2012, May). WSJ serves up tainted journalism on horse slaughter plate. Retrieved from Forbes.com.

Eckhoff, V. (2011, November). Racing industry silent about slaughtered thoroughbreds. Retrieved from Forbes.com.

Appendix A

 

This image shows a screenshot from one of the undercover videos mentioned in the articles (Retrieved from Forbes.com).

Appendix B

This image shows “Princess Madeline.” A former racehorse rescued from a kill buyer (Retrieved from Forbes.com).