Why End Horse Slaughter – The Canadian Horse Defence Coalition

These videos show some of the issues with horse slaughter in North America. Many horses slaughtered in Canada come from US auctions.

WHY HORSE SLAUGHTER MUST END

If a single picture speaks 1,000 words, the images of misery that the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition (CHDC) has collected over the past decade should fill up a small library.

Here we provide just a tiny sampling of such images.

After you have viewed them, we hope you will agree that the slaughter of horses for meat, and their live export for slaughter to Japan, should be banned without delay.

Horses are as dear to many human hearts as are cats and dogs, whose suffering we do not tolerate.

It is not acceptable for industry to be allowed to dictate what is humane and acceptable to do to horses.

The “fox guarding the henhouse” insists that this practice is humanely conducted, but it is clear to see that profit is the biggest motivator here, and animal welfare concerns are likely to be found on the back burner.

THERE ARE MANY REASONS TO BAN THE SLAUGHTER OF HORSES IN CANADA:

horses are easily panicked, “flight” animals, difficult to stun and kill in an assembly-line environment
it is a fallacy that horse slaughter is “humane euthanasia”; it is a brutal, often prolonged and painful ending to a beautiful life
the horse slaughter industry provides opportunity and revenue for thieves and fraudsters, who can easily lie their way through required paperwork, namely the “Equine Information Document” (EID) that must follow the animal from original source to slaughterhouse
the EID was developed by the CFIA in response to European Union concerns regarding the safety of horsemeat, but the document has been shown to be ineffective in terms of stopping fraud and theft in the horse slaughter pipeline; criminally-minded people do not care what prohibited drugs the horses may have been administered in the past, let alone what effects dangerous drug residues may have on consumers of horsemeat
horse slaughter is an “easy out” for irresponsible breeders, who frequently offload their cast-offs at meat auctions
ending horse slaughter would automatically raise the bar, resulting in more responsible and selective breeding, and eliminating the influx of U.S. horses that currently cross the border for slaughter and account for approximately 36-60% of horses slaughtered in Canada
horse auction marts, scattered throughout Canada, help to feed the pipeline to slaughter; meat dealers, who want cheap horses for fattening, are a fixture at these sales, where unwanted horses have arrived from diverse directions (family farms, dude strings, the racing and rodeo industries, to name a few)
manure-infested feedlots warehouse horses awaiting shipment to slaughter; feedlot horses are not well-cared-for – they often exhibit long, cracked hooves and injuries, and some are clearly diseased
horses are shipped live, in small wooden crates, to Japan for slaughter; they are crammed together, often three to four per crate, occasionally with the heads of taller horses hitting the ceiling of the crate; this practice violates two Sections of the Health of Animals Regulations, and a lawsuit has been launched by CHDC in response to these abject breaches of legislation
when horses are live-shipped overseas for slaughter, they are automatically at the mercy of industry practices in that country; Canadian laws no longer protect them
statistics show a steady decrease in Canadian horse slaughter numbers over recent years – i.e.: 67,995 in 2015; 54,100 in 2016; and 33,494 in 2017
it appears that this “dying” industry is floundering, so why not support the vibrant live horse industry instead, which brings in billions of dollars in revenue to Canada annually?
A 2004 Ipsos-Reid poll revealed that 64% of respondents (2/3 of Canadians polled) do not believe in the slaughter of horses for human consumption