Horses deserve a lot better than we give them

 

ARMCHAIR MAYOR SAYS — Today’s front-page headline in The Kamloops Daily News,  Protest Focuses on Horse Slaughter , has stirred up a surprising number of unsympathetic and insensitive comments about the killing of horses for meat.

The story is about a protest planned for Saturday in Westwold (people are supposed to meet at the elementary school at 11 a.m.) against the reopening of a slaughterhouse that slaughters and processes horses. The issue is certainly not new in our area.

Back in 2011, 22 wild horses that had been rounded up were hauled to the Kamloops stockyards for auction, the expectation being they’d be slaughtered for meat. That started a continent-wide protest — two of the horses were saved by the animal-welfare group Critteraid.

I wrote quite a bit about it at the time and can’t express my personal abhorrence toward slaughtering horses any better now than I did then. What follows is an Armchair Mayor column I wrote on the issue at the time. I think it still applies.

Horses Deserve Better Than We Give

The Kamloops Daily News

Feb. 12, 2011

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

The Boys are there to meet me when I enter their paddock around quarter to seven each morning.

Tanner nickers softly and nuzzles my hand, knowing his treat of pellets is on the way, an appetizer before the main course of hay. He tends to get a little ribby in winter, and needs more calories, whereas Bradley – also known affectionately as ol’ Barrel Butt – is an easy keeper.

They’ve been together for 15 years, and we call them The Boys.

“Move,” I tell Tanner, “or I’ll put you up for auction.”

That’s a new one I tried this week, a poor joke, but maybe he understood me, since he trotted over to his grain bin to wait impatiently for me to bring the supplement.

We don’t ride them much anymore, but I can’t imagine consigning these beloved family members to the slaughterhouse. Yet tens of thousands of stable horses, race horses, cow horses, pleasure horses and wild horses end up there every year when their “usefulness” is over.

Twenty-some feral horses went on auction at the stockyards this week, every one of them likely going to the horse-meat export market. Some people think this is terrible, others reason that wild horses need to be thinned out to protect grazing land and that this is as humane a way of doing it as any.

From what I’ve been reading of the horse-slaughter business, I beg to differ with the latter view.

Horse meat isn’t very popular in most of Canada, but the export market to Europe and Asia is big. And, since the slaughter of horses for meat was made illegal in the U.S., horses from that country are simply shipped north to a half-dozen Canadian slaughterhouses that process them.

They’re typically bought at auctions like the one in Kamloops. So-called “kill buyers” pay cheap money for them – a couple of hundred bucks apiece – and ship them for slaughter. At the other end of the food chain, the meat sells for as much as $30 a pound.

Horses are usually killed at slaughter with something called a captive bolt pistol that fires a four-inch nail at the horse’s head. Videos posted on the Internet – I don’t recommend them for family viewing – show panicked horses being prodded into killing pens that are too big and too slippery, where they try to avoid the weapon being pointed at them.

The operator often has to use the pistol several times before the animal is rendered unconscious.

Some day, when age and illness overtakes them, I’ll have to make a dreaded decision about one or other of The Boys. I’ll call a vet to come and do what’s necessary at home, where familiar surroundings and kind hands will allow them to leave this world without fear, panic or pain.

Horses are prey animals that survive on the instinct to escape dicey situations. One can only imagine the trauma of those last days before slaughter. No horse lover would put them through it.

Some people point out that we slaughter cattle, pigs and other livestock, but horses are different – in our culture, at least, they are a part of our families just as dogs and cats are.

They work hard for us, give us pleasure, and are among the most noble creatures on earth. A horse – wild or tame – joyfully galloping in full flight across a snow-covered field or summer grassland is the very essence of freedom.

There’s an obvious answer – give the many horse-rescue groups a chance to find homes for them before they’re auctioned for slaughter.

They certainly deserve better than we’re giving them.