WSJ Serves Up Tainted Journalism On Horse Slaughter Plate

WSJ Serves Up Tainted Journalism On Horse Slaughter Plate

First the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal...now this?

Vickery Eckhoff Contributor
 
Wall Street Journal reporters Douglas Belkin and Nathan Koppel are in good company. On May 4, they published an article on horse slaughter so eerily similar to articles appearing in a variety of unrelated publications, even ol’ Rupert Murdoch himself might be left wondering.

How did they all end up using the same specific phrases and anecdotes? Twist so many of the same key facts? Quote the same people and ultimately, critically, leave out so much available data on the issue? Were journalists cribbing off a PR script prepared by the horse-slaughter lobby? Has anyone called Scotland Yard?

Origins of a Disinformation Campaign: Rebranding Slaughter

The horse-slaughter lobby represents a handful of powerful industries looking to bring horse slaughter back to the U.S.: meat packers and slaughter operators, for one thing. Cattle ranchers and the Farm Bureau. Then there’s the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and pharmaceutical companies (like the makers of  Read Premarin). Finally, there are the horse breeders and breed registries like the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) and American Paint Horse Association (APHA).

Naturally, they don’t like being identified as the “horse-slaughter lobby.” That sounds too mean. Instead, they call themselves “the horse industry.” This may sound like a generic classification for horse-related businesses and professionals, but it’s not.

You can own a racing stable, breed or show horses or run a veterinary practice, but if you’re among the 80% of Americans opposed to slaughtering horses, you’re not official “horse industry” according to “horse industry” people. They’ve appropriated that term to make their views seem mainstream, all while painting public opposition to slaughter as emotional and dangerous animal-rights driven extremism.

This is all a clever bit of disinformation, since 80% of the public is a very large group of Americans. It includes a long, bipartisan list of the members of Congress, business leaders and professionals both in and out of the horse world, entertainers and regular old Americans—all of them opposed to slaughtering horses in the U.S. or exporting them to slaughter.

Currently, horses are being exported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico. This has been going on for years, even when U.S. slaughterhouses were open. What has changed is the provision for federal horse slaughter inspections ready to lunge forward thanks to a closed-door session that took place in November, 2011.

Essentially, three pro-slaughter U.S. Congressmen removed language banning inspections of horse-slaughter operations in an agricultural appropriations bill that was signed by Congress and President Obama.

The “horse industry” is doing all it can to seize the opportunity and push horse slaughter down the American public’s throat—with the right PR and the media’s help.

The distinctions—between the pro-and anti-slaughter sides and between foreign and domestic slaughter—are important for the public to know because key legislation is being pushed at the local, state and federal level.

Please read more about this great disinformation campaign here.

 

Investigation on Horse Meat Entering Europe From America

Italian Horse Protection Association

Investigation on horse meat entering Europe from America

In the USA there is no differentiation between FPA (Food Producing Animal) and non-FPA equidae; horses are simply not considered as part of the food chain. US' horses are slaughtered in Canada and Mexico (and perhaps in the USA re-starting in 2012). Horse meat is exported primarily to Europe (France, Belgium, Italy and Germany are the main horse-meat eating countries). The significant point here is therefore that any horse, not being considered part of the food chain, can be treated with any and all drugs which the vet - or indeed simply the owner - considers necessary, with no formal requirements to observe or fulfil.

The European Union, quite rightly severe (although in our opinion not sufficiently) with its own producers, from whom it demands a strict record of all drugs administered to animals destined for human consumption in the name of the health and safety of the consumer, accepts a mere declaration by the owner of the horse that no drug which is inadmissible in Europe has been administered to the animal, or that due time has elapsed between the administration of drugs, and slaughter. This document should also contain all the necessary information for identification of the equine.

Volunteers from the Equine Welfare Alliance (an alliance of animal rights associations, with members in 18 countries among which Italy, represented by IHP) travelled to New Holland in Pennsylvania, USA to a market for horses destined for slaughter in Canada, to see just how these declarations worked. The volunteers photographed as many declarations as they could manage to get their hands on for a moment: they were all actually blank with just a signature and then just stuck onto any horse, indiscriminately. In one case, there are two pages, one with just a signature and no further details about the horse, the other a blank piece of paper with the name and address of the vendor, plus a comment on how strong and healthy the horse is, and the phrase ‘no drugs'. The practice begs the question, even if the forms were filled in correctly, as to what guarantee there is that the vendor is telling the truth? The Equine Welfare Alliance immediately sent their photos to the competent authority in the EU but has to date received no reply.

Take a look at the certificates.

Given the situation, some university researchers (Nicholas Dodman, Tufts University, Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Massachussets; Nicolas Blondeau University of NIce “Sophia Antipolis”, Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology , France, and Ann M. Marini, University of Bethesda, Department of Neurology, Maryland) put to the test a theory, cross checking the data of some of the animals sent for slaughter with the data banks from racecourses where the horses had run. Those data bases contain the records, required by anti-doping laws, of treatments with phenylbutazone (commercial name: Bute), a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug commonly used on horses but which is prohibited in Europe for horses destined for human consumption.

By means of a complex procedure, the researchers uncovered information about the data of races of 16 horses out of 50 of those under study. The result of the study is that all the horses whose data was located had been treated with Bute, some of them only one week before slaughter. However the data uncovered was relative to race dates, while not all treatments administered are logged if they are not close to the date of a race. Horse meat exported to Europe, therefore, is very likely indeed to contain traces of prohibited substances, and not only of fenilbutazone.

Read here the full text of the article by Dodman, N., et al. Association of phenylbutazone usage with horses bought for slaughter: A public health risk. Food Chem. Toxicol. (2010), (doi:10.1016/j.fct.2010.02.021)

After having read the results of this research, we looked further and found a shocking list of drugs and hormones, in every day use on horses in America but severely restricted (or indeed actually prohibited) in Europe because they are dangerous, some very dangerous, to human health. Some hormones permitted in the USA but prohibited, or at any rate strictly regulated in the EU, can be considered so dangerous that some transatlantic health organisations advise, for example: "It is recommended that pregnant women do not handle this product and that the person carrying the container for the oral administration of the product should wear at least two pairs of disposable gloves and be assisted by someone who can open the doors for them, in order to avoid the risk of contamination”.

Digging even deeper we came across something that we would never have wanted to find. Two inspection reports of the EU dated autumn 2010, one in Canada, one in Mexico, following an EU inspection to ensure that horse meat produced there reached an acceptable standard for European public health.

The results of the two inspections are chilling: two slaughter houses in Mexico are completely inadequate, yet anyhow authorised to export meat to the EU. The Mexican authorities “promised” the inspectors that they will not issue export certificates for meat from those two abattoirs. Other slaughter houses “ONLY” had the problem of non-drinkable water, hygiene issues, and, naturally, no check on the veracity of the certificates about drugs. The inspection concluded that the slaughter houses, even though authorised to export to Europe, are not in line with the set standards. Imports to date have not ceased. The situation in Canada is slightly better but even there, apart from some hygiene problems there is absolutely no check on the presence of drugs, apart from the ridiculously inadequate declaration of the vendor.

Read the Canadian inspection report.
Read the Mexican inspection report.

This situation is not only very serious from the point of view of public health, due to the amount of dangerous or very dangerous drugs the consumer is ingesting, but is it totally scandalous, if we think that the authorities who are supposed to watch over these things are perfectly aware of what has been going on since autumn 2010, quite likely even earlier, and who not only have photographs showing how the ‘certificates' are produced, but also have the word of their very own inspectors, who declare in writing that there can be no guarantee for the public health.

As if this was not enough , it is a common myth in some Countries that horse meat should be given often to children and pregnant women, and to cure anaemia. In other words to all those who should be the object of increased health protection. Health protection that the EU fails to give.

Related articles

• The True Cost of Canada's Horse Meat Industry (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)
• Mr President, You Promised! (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)
• Author of Bute Article Blasts Wallis' Letter as "Nonsense" | Horse Back Magazine (goldendays-suzanne.blogspot.com)