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I realize this is not a subject one wants to think about, but I 
received this today from a
member of the Horse Council and it is worth reading as it is an update 
about what is happening
in this industry

Subject:  A Canadian perspective on horse slaughter (long)

I belong to another list with a preponderance of
Canadian horse people, and one of the members recently
posted a couple of messages giving a really
interesting perspective on the issue of horse
slaughter and shipping horses to Canada for slaughter.
She has graciously permitted me to pass them along.
I thought folks here might like to see them.

Tue Jan 22, 2008

Re: National horse?????

It is a heated issue, but it is ironic that a country
that worked to honor the horses as our national emblem
is now rapidly becoming the slaughter capitol of North
America.

While the cruelty to horses is above all of concern,
the side of the issue that is being ignored among
horse owners, is what this will mean to the pleasure
and competitive horse industry. Most of the horsemeat
from Canada goes to Europe, and right now, Europe does
not require that supplier countries follow the same
rules as European union member countries, although it
does require that horse slaughter houses be EU
certified. In the EU, no horses that have ever had
common medications such as bute, Ivermectin, Strongid
-ever in their lives, can enter the food chain. EU
member countries now must have identification and
passport systems for their horses to show if they have
ever been given these substances. In turn, instead of
being able to purchase these medications and
administer them ourselves, in order to monitor, the
purchase and administration of these common
medications for horses have come under the exclusive
control of veterinarians. The cost of this to the
pleasure horse owner has made horse ownership more and
more impossible. An offshoot of EU humane
transportation rules has meant that drivers who want
to haul their horses anywhere for any reason - 40 kms
in England, must take a certification course no matter
how long they have been driving or hauling horses.

We are seeing the start of these incipient regulations
in Canada with the new European governed disciplines.
For 2008, Equine Canada passports and horse licenses
are mandatory documents for all horses and ponies
entering Dressage, Eventing, Hunter and Jumper
competitions. All horses must have either a valid EC
passport with a current horse license sticker or be
registered at each competition where passports are
required. This is even for small schooling shows and
with the new rules, and all the required licences and
memberships needed to buy the licences, these events
in Canada are becoming cost-prohibitive to the average
person. National identication in the form of
microchipping and premise identification as with the
NAIS will follow for Canada.

As long as the United States keeps up its ban, it will
keep its recreational, pleasure, competitive, and
racing industries healthy and secure. The social value
and economic benefits of these horse industries in the
United States alone far exceeds the economic benefits
of horse slaughter in the entire world.

Things aren't always what they seem on the surface so
I am thinking seriously about all the issues.


Jan 24, 2008

Cross Border Horse Politics

Canada has not had a sustainable horse slaughter
industry in several decades. Even when the PMU
industry was in its hey day, Canada has never had
enough unwanted horses to provide enough horses to
make the business profitable enough for its (then)
three foreign owned slaughterhouses to stay in
business. Each year, for decades, 43% or more of the
horses slaughtered in Canada for European consumption
are brought in from the United States. In 2006,
official Canadian government statistics show that
50,242 horses were slaughtered in Canada. 21,639 of
those came from the United States.
http://www.agr.gc.ca/redmeat/almr2006.htm
http://www.luckythreeranch.com/horseslaughterstats.html
http://www.afac.ab.ca/reports/usborder.pdf

Approximately 30-40% of the other slaughter horses
came from PMU farms, and while other sources have
never been officially documented, average estimates on
the slaughter contribution of the racing industry,
both Thoroughbred and Standardbred have been 10-20%
and some from rodeo stock. The recreational horse
owner has contributed little to the slaughterhouses.

Back in 1986, the department of agriculture of
Saskatchewan reported that : "The horse industry is
slowly drying up in North America. The industry was
originally fed by spent work and riding horses. This
supply was supplemented by horses coming from PMU
(pregnant mare urine) operations. There are 487 PMU
operations in the Prairies. In the last five years,
the industry has seen riding horse popularity decline,
as well as seeing a movement by the PMU industry to
try to sell more of its spent stock as riding horses
instead of slaughter stock. The slaughter of horses
has many critics, making the industry a little
secretive and testy. The PMU industry wishes to make
their operations as controversy free as possible.

This dwindling supply has led to industry
restructuring. The Japanese have sold their interest
in Alsask Packers in Alberta (Edmonton Meat Packers)
and a large Belgian company has consolidated it's
North American horse operations into Texas, closing a
4,000 head horse feedlot in Midland, Ontario."
http://www.agr.gov.sk.ca/afif/Projects/96000322/default.htm

(Welcome to Beltex, Texas folks, one of the three U.S.
slaughterhouses to close. They also own the large
slaughterhouse in Juarez, Mexico. )

But what else happened in 1986? - the Tax Reform Act
in the UnitedStates. This closed the tax-sheltering
"passive investment" loophole, limiting the use of
horse farms as tax shelters. I remember well,
thousands of horses, particularly Arabian horses who
were in their height of popularity, being dropped like
hot potatoes by their wealthy owners and shipped off
to slaughterhouses. It wasn't about average people and
their debts being unable to feed their horses. They
didn't have the tax write-off to begin with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_horse

Over the next four years, the United States massacred
almost 350,000 of its horses EVERY YEAR!. By 1990,
Canada had another slaughterhouse going and was taking
over 70,000 American horse for slaughter each year.
Border crossing regulations were amended to make it
easier for the volume of American slaughter horses to
cross the border, and to this day, U.S. horses bound
for slaughter in Canada still don't need a Coggin's
test or a Health Certificate.

Fast forward now to 2003. The PMU industry is cutting
its contracts by 2/3rds. In Europe, horse
identification has been instituted by the EU, the
Canadian government has given EC a $300,000 grant to
develop the National ID system for horses in Canada,
and talks in parliament occur about meeting
international standards. The United States is
attempting to shove the NAIS down horseowners'
throats. The AQHA, America's biggest breed registry is
all for this and hopes to get its mitts on the dollars
for administering a big chunk of the NAIS program. But
the rest of the horse owning American public says no
-loudly. Meanwhile animal rights organizations have
taken hold and are corrupt but powerful. HSUS, PETA,
and personalities like Wayne Pacelle and Ingrid
Newkrik attract thousands of young urban rebels
looking for a cause. ALF has been harassing medical
researchers for years and AR activists have already
blown up a slaughterhouse in Oregon. The Cavel
slaughterhouse in Illinois is set on fire. Through a
series of legal wrangles, horse slaughter in the U.S..
is banned . The slaughterhouse companies were prepared
and immediately set up in Canada or expanded Mexican
operations. The NAIS for horses is put on hold in the
U.S. not to be looked at again until 2009. Most people
settle down except the AVMA (federal vets out of some
work) AQHA and a few rodeoers bent on getting
publicity to bring slaughter back and make sure horses
stay food animals. The American Horse Council decides
to stay out of it.

Canada once again has access to enough slaughter
horses to keep the industry going and even expand it.
Current horse slaughter statistics are strangely no
longer readily available on the AAFC website for 2007.
Processes for horse owners that fall in line toward EU
requirements start being put in place for horse owners
in Canada and EC is involved in "developing"the
national horse identification program (the Canadian
NAIS) -funded by $300,000 Canadian government dollars.
A few concerned people speak out about it but are
ignored or labeled crackpots. Everybody is focused on
our sudden 'unwanted' horse problem and our need for
slaughterhouses to solve the problem by getting rid of
the victims.

With PMU numbers down, and racing people getting their
horses into rescues and adoption programs, and rodeo
events being banned in city after city, horses in
Canada are suddenly publicized as hugely unwanted too
and nobody stops to think that most of the horses
going to slaughter in Canada or being sent live to
Japan for bashishi -aren't even ours!

Canadians, spurred on by American pro-slaughter
propaganda are huddled in mass agreement about the
threat of invasion of unwanted horses from within, and
the government that has directed funding toward more
slaughterhouses, huddles in fear of invasion by Animal
Rights activists and liberationists from everywhere.
Meanwhile, in the United States, another tax reform
bill 'The Equine Equity Act' that would bring back
much of the pre-1986 tax breaks for horse owners, has
been quietly but unsuccessfully trying to make it
through Congress under the Bush administration, but is
being regularly re-introduced. Should it succeed, it
will be economically worthwhile for Americans to own,
race and show more horses for the tax write-offs, and
they don't have to be food animals. If the slaughter
ban stays in effect, there's not much need for the
NAIS for horses (unless maybe Hilary gets in) The
horse industry can get back on its feet and HSUS and
PETA can probably live with it all. Just have to watch
out for that transport ban.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1251

Canada and the EU? Mexico is said to slaughter more
horses than both Canada and the U.S combined, Brazil,
Argentina and Uruguay are right up there too with
slaughterhouses owned by the same handful of companies
. Mexico does not now have the infrastructure or
widespread technology or rural development to
implement an acceptable identification program if it
comes to be. Canada does.

And -we do have other issues of neglected and abused
horses. We also have issues with neglected and abused
dogs and cats and we don't send them to Asia to be
eaten. Every time Animal Cruelty legislation with any
teeth in it comes close to getting through, it gets
stymied by parliament or big agriculture interests.

How do we fix this now that it's running out of
control?

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