Canadian Horsemeat Not Drug-Free

Canadian horsemeat not drug-free, European audit finds European Commission monitors have “serious concerns” about Canada’s ability to track health and treatment of horses.

MICHAEL BURNS / MICHAEL BURNS PHOTO

Thoroughbred race horse Backstreet Bully finished first in this August 2008 race at Fort Erie. The race horse changed ownership after retirement and was sent to slaughter, despite frantic last-minute pleas to save his life by people who knew the horse had been given veterinary drugs over his lifetime that made him unsafe for human consumption.

Exported Canadian horsemeat intended for human consumption cannot be trusted to be free of toxic drugs, according to a recently released European audit that cites “serious concerns” about the integrity of Canada’s food safety measures.

Among the reported findings, auditors discovered that slaughterhouse tests conducted two years ago on horse carcasses poised to enter the human food chain showed residues of prohibited substances, including a commonly used veterinary medicine called “bute.” Phenylbutazone, or bute, has been linked to bone-marrow disease in humans if eaten in meat.

“It cannot be guaranteed that horses (slaughtered in Canada) have not been treated with illegal substances within the last 180 days before slaughter,” the audit states.

The report also described the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the country’s food safety watchdog, as having “shortcomings” in its ability to accurately trace horses’ identities and complete medical histories.

All horses butchered in Canada for export as human food, including horses imported from the United States, must be accompanied by an equine identification “passport” completed by the animal’s last owner. Owners must truthfully declare on these signed affidavits that their slaughter-bound animals have not been given prohibited drugs for the previous six months and are, therefore, eligible to become human food.

A 2013 Star investigation found these passports, called Equine Information Documents, are open to fraud and error. In European countries, in contrast, horse ownership and medical histories are tracked from birth.

European auditors, who police the meat coming into their market, gathered information from Canadian slaughter facilities during a two-week inspection in May of 2014. In their report, auditors expressed doubt about the ability of Canada’s food safety regulator to always provide untainted horsemeat to European Union markets.

“There are serious concerns in relation to the reliability of the controls over both imported and domestic horses destined for export (to EU markets),” the European report states.
Auditors also found that in Canada “there are no official checks to verify the veracity of the (equine passports) or whether the horses actually match the identifications registered” on the passports.

“The information contained in several (equine passports) checked by the ... audit team appeared incomplete, unreliable or false. It can therefore not be ensured that horses slaughtered in Canada for export to the EU have not been treated with substances which are not permitted in the EU, in particular hormonal growth promotants.” Testosterone was mentioned as a prohibited growth hormone in EU meat.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, responding to written questions from the Star, declared that horsemeat exported from Canada is safe to eat.

“Canada has a strong and robust food safety inspection system in place,” the agency said in statement.

“This includes effective ante and post mortem verification and frequent sampling and testing of meat to detect residues with CFIA inspectors and veterinarians present on a daily basis. The number of samples taken is consistent with international standards.”

The federal food safety agency also stated it “welcomes feedback from the audit and is committed to addressing opportunities for improvement identified within the report.”

Horsemeat is Canada’s top red meat export to European countries.

The audit team attached to the European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office evaluated the sanitary measures and control systems in place for fresh meat exports (including horse, bison and cattle) from Canada to Europe.

With respect to horses, the European team visited unnamed slaughterhouses, feedlots and one border crossing (the majority of horses killed annually in Canada are imported from the United States).
The vulnerability of Canada’s Equine Information Document was also a key concern in a 2010 European audit. That report found Canada’s ability to trace prohibited drugs in food-bound horses “is inadequate” to protect consumers.

Canada’s equine document is the first step in protecting the public from drug-tainted horse meat. A previous Star investigation found the horse passport that Canada relies upon to keep toxic meat off dinner tables around the world is easily compromised. The Star obtained 10 passports in 2013; nine were incomplete or error-riddled.

The 16 carcasses with bute residues identified in the recent audit were tested in 2013 at one unnamed slaughterhouse. The auditors noted the slaughterhouse operator conducted its own investigation of the owners of the 16 horses who submitted the non-compliant equine passports.

Auditors noted that while “the CFIA puts the responsibility for follow-up of non-compliances largely on the shoulders of the slaughterhouses, the CFIA does not always fulfill its obligations for verifying and ensuring the effectiveness of the follow-up investigations and corrective actions.”

Plot Against Allowing Horse Slaughter For Meat Thickens - Farm Progress

Plot Against Allowing Horse Slaughter For Meat Thickens

What about this, FDA? Are you or are you not going to enforce your own regulations and permanently ban horse slaughter in the US? What are you waiting for?

New findings suggest FDA's own "animals of unknown origins" policy may prevent U.S. resumption of horse slaughter for human consumption.

Published on: Mar 11, 2014

Efforts to prevent the slaughter of American horses for food made significant progress last week. Front Range Equine Rescue, a national nonprofit working to end horse abuse and neglect, discovered that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibits use of animals for meat if those animals don't have sufficient medical records.
It's not clear from the information whether this provision is from the Food Safety and Modernization Act. But FRER, along with the Humane Society of the United States, contends that FDA's policy concerning unsafe toxins and drug residues found in meats should result in a ban on the sale of American horse meat.
FRER found more than 125 FDA citations to producers of adulterated meat reported in the past two years. Citations are issued for failing to maintain complete veterinary treatment records for an animal, failing to systematically review treatment records before slaughter to assure drugs have been administered only as directed, or failing to hold an animal for the proper length of time following treatment. Any of these actions leads to prohibiting use of those animals for meat.

NO MORE HORSEBURGERS? To qualify for slaughter plant sales in the future, horses may be required to have better certified health records.

No or false verification of safety

Unlike other livestock raised within the agricultural system, virtually all horses sold for meat began as working, competition or sport horses, companion animals or wild horses. "Slaughterers and middlemen have virtually no knowledge about the horses' prior veterinary histories," claims Hilary Wood, president of FRER, "although falsified documents are often used to suggest they do."
"Horses are often used from show rings to trail riding to therapy programs. They're treated with many different drugs throughout their lives because horse owners don't expect they could end up as meat," adds Wood. "We are committed to preventing the slaughter of horses for human consumption to protect human health, the environment, and horses from cruelty and suffering."

Plot Against Allowing Horse Slaughter For Meat Thickens

In March 2012, FRER and HSUS filed a petition requesting that FDA certify all horses and horse meat from American horses as "unqualified" for human consumption. The petition lists more than 110 drugs and other substances commonly administered to horses that are or should be prohibited.
More than 100,000 American horses are sent to slaughter each year, mainly for consumption in Europe and Asia. The current federal budget stripped away USDA funding for horse slaughter operations. But Wood says it remains to be seen whether that funding will be restored come October.

Related articles

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• The European Commission Has Failed to Stem That Tide of Horse Meat Imports.(goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)

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The European Commission Has Failed to Stem That Tide of Horse Meat Imports.

The European Commission Has Failed to Stem The Tide of Horse Meat Imports.

 

Swabe is the European Union Director for Humane Society International. This piece is adapted from the article Scant Progress Made in EU Hors emeat Regulation on Horsetalk. Swabe contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The horse meat scandal, it seems, is far from over. One only needs to look at the recent case revealing Latvian horse meat in frozen meat-pies sold in the United Kingdom (UK) to see that horse meat fraud is widespread.

Even in the legal horse meat trade, things are not completely transparent. It has been three years since the European Union (EU) introduced strict new requirements for the import of horse meat from non-EU countries, yet meat from horses that should never have been slaughtered for export continues to arrive on the EU market. The European Commission has failed to stem that tide of horse meat imports.

The question is, when can we expect the commission to act?

Officials have yet to explicitly link imports from non-EU countries and the horse meat implicated in the recent UK fraud. However, for those of us working to protect horses, the discoveries of illicit horse meat in beef burgers, lasagne and pies provides a missing puzzle piece: could this be where so much of the horse meat imported into the EU is going?

Food suppliers already lawfully and routinely process horse meat into cheap convenience foods in some parts of Europe without many consumers realizing it (unless they read the small print). It is easy to see how unscrupulous operators have been able to launder horse meat into the food chain by passing it off as beef. The rise of processed meat products explains, in part, the apparent surfeit of horse meat in Europe, because most consumers are not clamoring to eat it.

Indeed, the European horse meat industry has been in steady decline since the 1960s as both culinary tastes and cultural attitudes have gradually changed. Even in France and Italy, traditional heartlands of horse slaughter and consumption, the number of horses killed has waned significantly. Statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization show that in 1961, 333,000 horses were slaughtered in France and 283,000 horses were slaughtered in Italy. By 2011, the numbers had dropped to 15,500 and 62,237, respectively.

Evidently, only a minority of French and Italian consumers are actually going out of their way to regularly consume horse flesh. A survey conducted by Ipsos MORI for Humane Society International in 2012 found that only 50 percent of respondents in France and 58 percent in Italy believed that it was acceptable to eat horses. Moreover, most respondents said they never or only sometimes eat horse meat, whilst a mere 3 percent of Italians and 4 percent of French claimed to eat it frequently.
The fact is, Europe's declining horse meat industry is supplemented by significant global imports. EU import statistics show large quantities of horse meat annually being imported from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and Uruguay.

Even when horse meat appears on the label of processed meat products with no question of food fraud, without mandatory origin labeling, EU consumers still have no idea where that meat came from. Why does that matter? Because imported horse flesh that fails to meet EU food safety standards poses a potentially serious health hazard.

The end of July marked three years since the EU introduced stricter import requirements. Only imports of horse meat from horses with a known lifetime medical-treatment history, and whose records showed they satisfied veterinary medicine withdrawal periods, are supposed to be allowed in to the EU. Yet, measures taken by export countries to preclude veterinary drug residues from entering the food chain are not fit for purpose.

Approximately 20 percent of horse meat consumed in the EU comes from Canada and Mexico, but the majority of that meat actually derives from U.S. horses — which are not raised for slaughter, but instead vendors acquired the horses from random sources. This is worrying because, in the United States, the use of veterinary drugs such as phenylbutazone — a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory prohibited in the EU for use in food-producing animals — is widespread, and there is no mandatory, lifetime, veterinary medical record-keeping.

Canada's and Mexico's lack of compliance has been exposed multiple times by non-governmental organizations, journalists and the European Commission's Food and Veterinary Office (FVO), including the problem of so-called "kill buyers," who purchase U.S. horses at auction and ship them long distances over the border to be killed for food. Since 2010, FVO audits have found that Canada and Mexico have failed to ensure that all horse meat meets EU requirements.

In the aftermath of one of Europe's biggest-ever food scandals, the European Commission has consistently failed to act to stop imports of horse meat from third-party countries that do not meet EU food-safety requirements. With consumer confidence at an all time low — exemplified by this recent survey from Ireland — it is the Commission's duty to ensure that meat not considered fit for human consumption by EU standards no longer ends up on EU consumers' plates.

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Why Not Horse Meat? 05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Why Not Horse Meat?

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

There was a thought provoking blog published by The Huffington Post – Marc Vetri: Humanity And Justice For All regarding the topic of horse meat.  Disappointingly the current massive Horse Meat Scandal has put horse meat in the spotlight with curious foodies considering it for their next meal.  While I find the topic repugnant, as a meat eater, it would be hypocritical of me to dismiss it without careful regard.

The relationship humans have with horses is rooted in history.  Those roots grow deep.  Horses became our partners.  Much like dogs, they provided us with opportunities that we wouldn’t have had without them.  We could travel farther and faster while carrying heavy burdens.  We could till ground that would have been impossible without them.  We could travel in weather that would previously leave us housebound.  They provided us with sport and entertainment.  They provided us with the ability to round up other animals to raise for food.  While working together, deep relationships were born.  Yes, they are stunning to watch but the bond we share with them goes far beyond basic aesthetics.

Chances are at some point, just about everyone has enjoyed a horse in one respect or another.  Movies, horse races, grand prix event or rodeos – all would share the joy of horses.  Many have gone further by owning, riding, competing or working with horses in some way.  Ask someone about their horse and brace yourself for a deluge of proud stories.

How could we possibly eat these noble beasts?  If you take the emotional attachment out of it, technically we should.  They’re herbivores like cattle.  Horses aren’t that different.
Two key differences: Horses are not raised for food and our food system is not geared to handle them.

Not Raised For Food

Marc Vetri stated “If I were to find a livestock farmer who was raising them humanely, I would consider it.” However it goes far beyond simply raising them humanely.

Why not raise horses in the same manner as cattle?  In general, they’re harder to handle.  Unhandled horses bite and kick not only each other, but people as well.  They are a fight or flight animal and are very good at both.  Round ups of horses are much more difficult due to their speed, far beyond any cow.  Add their strength, power and height, handling them isn’t easy and accommodating them isn’t possible on every farm.  They’re harder on property and harder on fences.  ”Hard keepers” by cattle standards, the vast majority of horses need supplemental feeding to stay in good condition.  By their very nature, horses aren’t good candidates for food production animals.  There are easier more placid stock to raise.

Horses are currently handled from birth, halter broke, trained to accept grooming, leading, farriers, veterinarians and eventually a rider or to drive.  No one with the intent of sending an animal for meat wants to invest this much personal time or emotion.  While it would make them easier and safer to handle, the logistics of time and costs are not feasible.  With the average herd size of cattle in Canada being 61 head, imagine the time demands on keeping that many horses regularly handled and socialized.  It cannot be done.

During the process of horse ownership they are often medicated.  Horses tend to be exposed to more illnesses and injury due to their work.  Drugs used for fertility, performance, pain killers, illness or other medical issues are common.  The vast majority of these drugs would never be used in food producing animals.  Due to horses having various roles of work, the introduction of these medications should be assumed.  Severe adverse reactions in humans, cancer causing agents and hormonal therapies should never enter our food chain.  There is never the intent to send a horse for meat, so the drugs chosen are never considered for human consumption safety before they are administered.

Phenylbutazone is a common anti-inflammatory drug administered to horses that is not safe for humans.  It can cause “…severe adverse effects such as suppression of white blood cell production and aplastic anemia.”  This drug has also been found in some of the horse meat scandal samples.
There are only so many carcasses tested.  Of those, only so many tests can be run.  Considering the amount of ecoli and salmonella cases found in recent years, do we really want to trust our health regarding an unknown cocktail of drugs that may or may not be tested for?

“Nobody has established when it is safe to eat meat that has been treated with phenylbutazone….”

Food System Not Geared Towards Horses

Horses enter the food chain via auctions.  When a cow enters an auction, they’re being purchased either by meat buyers (in which case they go to slaughter) or to other farms for breeding programs and eventual slaughter.  Either way, their intent for food and treatment as such remains intact.  Horses however come from every walk of life (racing, pleasure riding, competitive jumping, draft, companions, etc.), at every age, in various levels of health.  Hay Shortage Victims, many horses are landing in auction that would typically be home safe in a barn.  Other horses have failed to respond to medical treatments and are being given up on.  Many times, the money has simply run out.  It is safe to say that no horse in North America is born with the intent of going for meat.

In order to garner the highest price, many are drugged in hopes of covering obvious lameness, behavioural issues or due to their alien surroundings simply just to calm them.  Well behaved, good looking, sound animals are hopefully picked up by new owners who take them home to their barns.  Those owners pay more so they are catered to.  For sellers, there is a financial impact of not drugging.  Sometimes a horse might show a bit of a spark in some way, in which case they’ll be purchased, a little TLC given so that they can hope to raise a better price in another auction.  Horses in poor condition, injured, not eye catching, excessively shy or even aggressive have little hope of going to a home.  Those horses are sold to meat buyers for bottom dollar, intended for slaughter.  Any other meat animal would be banned from entering the food chain if they had these same drugs administered to them.  However, the people sending the horses to the slaughter houses wouldn’t have administered the drugs or necessarily have any knowledge of them.

This is the criteria of your possible dinner meat: ill, poor condition and quite possibly drugged.  In a society of demanding the highest of quality, free range, antibiotic free, grass and grain fed meats, this source doesn’t qualify in the least.  There is no quality control on selection at all.

Food animals are transported in large groups via stock trailers in order to decrease costs.  Again, by their very nature as fight or flight animals, groups of horses in close quarters are dangerous.  Stress is a key factor.  They kick, panic, slip and will fall without proper support.  Injuries are often severe.  These trailers don’t have provisions for food or water and many will collapse from exhaustion or dehydration or even arrive dead.  Due to their very nature, they require a more refined mode of transportation in order to ensure their welfare.  In general, the largest safe horse trailers only carry up to 6 horses.

The slaughter system is tailored to cattle and swine.   Again, the nature of the horse causes undue stress and panic.  Kill methods approved for horses (generally) are either via gunshot or captive bolt.  Horses are ‘head shy’, meaning they don’t handle close handling of their heads or things being held by their heads without a fight.  Gunshots miss the mark.  Captive bolt often requires to be ‘stunned’ several times due to their panic levels.  Horse advocates suggest that due to their nature, horses cannot be slaughtered humanely.

No.  I would not advocate horse meat.  Horses cannot be accommodated humanely at a commercial level for food either by transport or slaughter.  The meat itself is not safe for human consumption due to the routine drugs administered to them. Without a sustainable method taking effort, cost and safety to both horse and human to raise them purely for food, there is not a feasible food production model for them.

There is no shortfall of meats available for human consumption.  Simply because we physically can does not mean we should.  At some point, the line needs to be drawn.  Even with the emotional attachment to horses taken out of the equation, horse meat has no place on our dinner plates.

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European commission may force U-turn on horse passports database

Government ended funding for national database last September and now leaves recording to 75 different bodies

• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 April 2013 11.58 EDT

David Heath, the minister for agriculture and the environment. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

Britain may have to make an embarrassing U-turn over a decision not to fund a national database for horse passports as the EU seeks to tighten controls in the wake of the horsemeat scandal.

As UK ministers announced a review of the government's handling of the crisis, it emerged that the European commission wants every country to have a central database of horse movements, including through abattoirs.

Britain had a national database until ministers ended funding last September, and now leaves recording to 75 different bodies. The commission plans to introduce new EU rules on the identification of horses, ponies and donkeys within months. These will make a central database mandatory and cut the number of bodies empowered to issue passports.

David Heath, Britain's minister for agriculture and the environment, promised a wide-ranging review of the government's response over the past three months "to help restore confidence", but did not say what its response would be to the commission's plans.

He said only that a meeting of experts across the EU last week had been "a useful exchange of views in advance of further discussions at official level later this week".

The charity World Horse Welfare has previously said ministers have been aware of the weaknesses in the UK passport system and that a good central IT system is needed.

The Guardian revealed last week that 2% of all carcasses of horses sent for slaughter are found to contain the veterinary medicine bute – although since February they have not been allowed to leave abattoirs until test results have been delivered.

Details of the government's review will be published by the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, soon. Heath said police investigations into "completely unacceptable" food fraud were continuing, and said it was right that "any weaknesses in our food system and the controls it is subject to are identified and dealt with".

Mary Creagh, Labour's environment spokeswoman, said the present passport system was a mess and ministers' "short-sighted and reckless decision" to scrap the database last year had made it harder to track horses intended for the human food chain.

"Any new database must be compatible with Ireland and France if we are to have horses moving freely between our three countries," she said.

Last week Asda reported that its smart price corned beef had tested positive for very low levels of bute, which is banned from the human food chain. The corned beef had previously been found to contain horse DNA, and is the only product to test positive for bute since the scandal began.
Officials have said horsemeat containing bute at very low levels presents a very low risk to human health. Twenty-four products in the UK have been named as containing more than 1% horsemeat.
Last week the Netherlands recalled 50,000 tonnes of meat sold across Europe as beef over a two-year period which may contain horsemeat. A small number of UK businesses may have received products from a trading company selling the meat.

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Drug-alert horsemeat did enter Yorkshire food chain

Drug-alert horsemeat did enter Yorkshire food chain - Main Section - Yorkshire Post

Drug-alert horsemeat did enter Yorkshire food chain

The ABP Foods plant in Leeming Bar, North Yorkshire, was at the centre of the original horse meat scandal.

By Jack Blanchard Political Editor
Published on Saturday 2 February 2013 05:00

ILLEGAL horsemeat contaminated with a cancer-causing drug was butchered in a British abattoir and sent to a farm in Yorkshire for human consumption, a Government agency has confirmed.

Health Ministers revealed yesterday that, contrary to previous assurances, a horse which was killed and butchered in Britain and known to be contaminated with the carcinogenic drug phenylbutazone – widely referred to as “bute” – has indeed entered the UK food chain.

Food safety officials claimed the banned meat was eaten only by the horse’s original owner, a farmer in Kirklees, and an associate of his on another farm in Lancashire.

But Labour warned there was no real evidence the potentially dangerous meat had not been distributed more widely. Bute is given to horses as an anti-inflammatory, but can cause cancer in humans and is strictly banned from entering the food chain across the EU.

English: Mary Creagh in Parliament (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the wake of the recent scandal over quantities of horsemeat found in supermarket beefburgers, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, Mary Creagh, has warned of several cases of bute being found in UK abattoirs.

Figures this week revealed that nearly 10,000 horses were killed and butchered for their meat in British abattoirs last year. Just over 150 were tested for bute, with nine coming back positive.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) moved to reassure the public that “none of the meat had been placed for sale in the UK”.

But it has now emerged that while most of the contaminated horsemeat was shipped to France, one carcase was divided up and sent to two farms in the north of England – one in Kirklees and another in Chorley, Lancashire.

In a written Parliamentary answer, Health Minister Anna Soubry said the FSA had contacted the relevant local authorities as soon as it realised the meat was contaminated – believed to be in September 2012. But she said that when environmental health officials visited the farms in question, they were told the meat had been “purchased for personal consumption – and had already been consumed”.

FSA officials said last night that they had accepted this version of events, adding that as the Yorkshire farmer and his associate had effectively eaten their own horse, the meat was never actually sold in the UK.

But Ms Creagh, who is also MP for Wakefield, said people would not be reassured that the food safety system was working. “The public must have confidence that the food they buy is properly labelled, legal and safe,” she said.

“Despite last week’s denials, the Food Standards Agency have now confirmed that horsemeat contaminated with phenylbutazone – or bute – has been consumed in the UK, despite it being banned from the human food chain.

“The Government, retailers and the FSA need to get a grip and set out what steps they will take to ensure this does not happen again.”

The bute contamination is the second horsemeat scandal to hit the UK this year, after traces of horse were found in a range of supermarket burgers last month.

The FSA said in a statement: “Horses treated with ‘bute’ are not allowed to enter the food chain. The FSA carries out checks in slaughterhouses to ensure that horses presented for slaughter are fit for human consumption. In 2012, the FSA identified five cases where horses returned non-compliant results. None of the meat had been placed for sale on the UK market.”

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A Sickening Ending - What If This Were YOUR Horse?

re-blogged from Shedrow Confessions ~
A Sickening End « Shedrow Confessions

A Sickening End

January 11, 2013 by shedrowconfessions

As we are all well aware, the biggest reason for slaughter given by the PSA (Pro-Slaughter Advocates) brain trust is that it is a way to deal with `unwanted horses’. According to them, slaughter keeps all these mystical beings from wandering the streets and becoming a menace to society and a drain on our tax dollars. Of course PSAs like Naughty Tobiano want us all to believe that kill buyers are just super nice guys trying to earn a living. They would never send good horse that had a use to slaughter. Instead, they just hang out at sales and pick up all these unwanted horses and `recycle’ them for a new purpose. Doesn’t that just make you all warm and tingly inside?

Do you see the horse above? He was slaughtered at Les Viandes de la Petite Nation January 8, 2013. He was anything but unwanted. His name was Backstreet Bully and he was originally bred and owned by Adena Springs and raced under Stronach Stables. As many of you are aware, Adena Springs is owned by Frank Stronach and they have been leaders in the movement in finding new careers for retired racehorses. They have an entire division devoted to retired racehorses and have taken this commitment very seriously. Backstreet Bully wasn’t a great racehorse but he was graduate of their program. Here is the write up about him from the Adena Springs Retirement Program prior to him being sold:

“Backstreet Bully is a kind 4 yr old, 16hh OTTB chestnut gelding. He was retired from racing September 2008. He is a solid loving horse with tons of puppy dog personality. He’s got a great sound mind, willing attitude and is very well mannered; he just loves to be loved. He has been ridden both english and western walk, trot, canter and hacks out quietly both alone and with company. We have started basic Parelli training with him. Backstreet bully will make an excellent pleasure horse. He has no vices or bad habits. He trailers, cross ties, clips and is never a problem for the vet or blacksmith.”

Somewhere along the line, something went badly wrong for Backstreet Bully and he ended up in a kill auction. Details about what happened are still coming out, but every effort was made by Transitions Thoroughbreds and Adena Springs to save this horse. This is a quote from Transitions on their Facebook page about what happened at the sale:

“He was pointed out to me at the auction by an employee thereof as she knew I was there to buy tbs – I tried to buy him – my bid was not taken, perhaps not seen – I tried to buy him after from the kill buyer and was told no – he was meat only. He was not eligible for slaughter and it begs the question of why the very person who does the paperwork on every horse running through that auction would specifically point him out to me and describe him so that I could bid on him at that sale to buy him would do that if he was meat only as that would be something she would need to put on that kill sheet. He was NOT announced as meat only either in the sale ring. I tried to stop it again, I got no response, I contacted his connections who ARE on my list of people who most definitely do NOT want their horses going to slaughter and they took immediate action. His faxed drug records clearly proved he was not eligible. Everybody knows that all tbs have most definitely had at least bute amongst other drugs if they have raced – he was not eligible and he was killed for nothing!!”

I’m still trying to patch together all the details from various postings I have seen, but I do know this much…. this was not an unwanted horse and this was not a horse that should have been slaughtered for meat or any other reason. This horse was still alive when his drug records were faxed to the slaughter-house. The slaughter-house was well aware they were in possession of a horse not suitable for slaughter for human consumption and that there were people wanting to bail him out. Remember, PSAs tell you it’s all about not wasting the unwanted horse’s meat. Well this horse was far from unwanted and he was most certainly not suitable for human consumption, but Les Viandes de la Petite Nation went ahead and slaughtered him anyhow just because they could. What purpose did that serve? The response of the CFIA vet in attendance at the slaughter-house, after she was informed of this horse’s drug status was “We (LPN) would have a lot of horses here and what would we do with them all?” I gather that statement was in reference to how many horses they have that are not suitable for human consumption. What DO they do with them all?

I have no personal connection with any of the people involved with Backstreet Bully and his sad end. If they choose to come forward and fill in some details, that’s great but I will leave it up to them. They are heartbroken over this and I don’t know what more they could have done. I haven’t seen the name of the person who adopted Backstreet Bully nor do I know if it is the same person that dumped him at this auction. What is important is that despite the fact that this horse should have never been at that sale in the first place, he seems to have been slaughtered out of spite. People tried hard to rescue this horse. They tried to buy him in the ring, they tried to buy him before he went on the truck. They informed the slaughter-house, backed up with vet records, that this horse should not be in a slaughter pen and they still went ahead and did it just because they could. Yeah, kill buyers are great guys and slaughter is just for horses that nobody wants. Rest in peace, Backstreet Bully. We won’t let them forget you any time soon……

You bet we won't! Are YOU with us? This could just as easily been my horse or YOURS.

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US Horses Head Back to Canadian Killing Floor - National Horse | Examiner.com

US horses head back to Canadian killing floor - National horse | Examiner.com

Sales starting again at Fallon, NV Livestock Exchange

 US horses head back to Canadian killing floor

October 15, 2012
By: Laura Leigh

This morning doors to Canadian killing floors reopened to take American horses for export.

On Friday apparently an "incorrectly labelled" shipment arrived in France causing the temporary shutdown of US horses accepted for import into the European Union (EU).

The lack of complete information given to US kill buyers and auction houses led to them to believe that the shutdown was due to the new regulations pending on US horse meat. The regulations will require a "passport" system that certifies animals as drug free and in the care of the seller for at least six months. Those regulations will become enforced sometime between now and July of 2013.

Auction yards and trucks have resumed "business as usual."

The Fallon Livestock auction in Nevada has notified customers that the regular Tuesday sale of horses will take place tomorrow. Yesterday there was only one horse at the auction yard.

However operations resume with the knowledge that changes are coming.

"It is only a matter of time before the unsafe practices cause this so-called industry to reform," said Connie J. Cunningham of Wild Horse Education, "in America horses are not raised for food."

All of this has occurred while the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act sits idle in Congress, with so many other pieces of Legislation.


Laura is an award winning illustrator, animator, writer and videographer. Her articles on Wild Horses and Burros have appeared in numerous publications. Her documentation has appeared in such venues as The I-Team Reports of KLAS-TV and CNN.

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