Saddling up for slaughter (Winnipeg Free Press)
Sinikka Crosland
Goodhand - margo.g...@freepress.mb.ca.
The author of the article is Paul Wiecek -
paul....@freepress.mc.ca
This article includes very graphic
picture of horse slaughter on the front page of one of
the sections.
The write-up is three full pages and inside there are actual pictures of a
horse being hit with a capitive bolt gun and
having his throat slit -
all in colour.
_________________________________________________________
Winnipeg Free Press:
Saddling up FOR SLAUGHTER
Sun Sep 17 2006
PAUL WIECEK
SHE'S still bony, she's still frail, she still cannot gain weight no matter how much she eats. But at least she's alive. Six months ago, Special Decision -- a 16-year-old former race horse at Assiniboia Downs with a regal pedigree -- was bound for the slaughterhouse.
She'd won five races during a brief three-year racing career, three of them at the Downs. She'd had six foals, and been shipped as far away as Idaho over the years to be bred to a stallion in hopes of producing a winner on the racetrack.
And she had the royal blood of a Triple Crown winner running through her veins as the granddaughter of Affirmed, who in 1978 became just the 11th -- and most recent -- thoroughbred to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes.
And yet on Valentine's Day this year, the smart money would have bet that Special Decision was about to become one of the 50,000 or so Canadian horses -- a disproportionate number of them from Manitoba -- who end up every year on a dinner plate somewhere, usually in Europe or Asia.
Victoria Morse was at home on her farm in Ste. Pierre on Valentine's Day when she got a call from the owner of Special Decision. The woman told Morse that she was ill and running low on money and could no longer take care of Special Decision.
She said she had only two options left for the horse -- the slaughterhouse or Morse's fledgling rescue operation, Equine Options. She was in tears. "She called and asked if we could take her," recalled Morse, "and we said sure."
The mare arrived in rough condition at the only horse rescue operation in this province.
"She still had her shoes on from the previous year," recalls Morse, "and she was thin and she was sick."
The horse has begun to improve and has become the favourite of Morse's young daughter. But still the ribs protrude and the once-powerful flanks that propelled her around the race track look withered.
It seems hard to believe this is the granddaughter of the last Triple Crown winner the world has seen.
But even harder still to believe that such a horse could end up on a dinner plate.
And yet it goes on all the time in Canada -- and perhaps more often to horses from this province than any other in the country.
That's because of Manitoba's history as host to a massive Pregnant Mare Urine industry in the 1990s, when hundreds of farms supplied drug maker Wyeth Organics with the PMU necessary to manufacture a hormone therapy for menopausal women called Premarin.
The industry has all but collapsed in the past three years since Wyeth developed a new lower-dose form of Premarin.
But one of the byproducts of the PMU industry is thousands of unwanted foals.
Some were sold as pets. Others found a career in show-jumping. At least one became a stakes race winner at Assiniboia Downs.
But most are still making their way through a pipeline whose final outlet is often the Manitoba horse auction. There, meat buyers compete with representatives of horse rescue agencies -- from as far away as Vermont, over the years -- in a ring where horses sell for pennies a pound.
The auctions still occur; another is reportedly scheduled for Winnipeg Livestock Sales just off the north Perimeter Highway later this fall.
And it is not just PMU horses who end up at auction. There are working horses that have outlived their purpose on farms; former show jumpers that can no longer jump; trail riders that can no longer be ridden. And finally, there are former race horses like Special Decision.
Neither Canada nor the United States track the number of former race horses slaughtered in each country every year. But the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals estimates that 10 per cent of them once proudly paraded before crowds at thoroughbred and quarter-horse tracks across the continent. Other agencies peg the number at closer to five per cent.
In Canada, that would suggest somewhere between 2,500 to 5,000 former race horses are slaughtered annually and converted into lean, high-protein cuts of meat.
Polls suggest Canadians oppose the practice of killing horses for human consumption. The United States Congress recently passed legislation aimed at stamping out the industry. It is currently considering further legislation.
Yet last year in Canada, Agriculture Canada reports 48,715 horses were sent to slaughter. The year before, it was 51,610. The year before that, it was 59,853.
And in 2002, 65,029 horses were sent to the three Canadian slaughterhouses -- two in Quebec, one in Alberta -- licensed by the federal government.
To put those numbers in international context, in 2004 -- the most recent year for which American numbers were available -- 65,976 horses were slaughtered in the U.S. And the country's horse population -- like its human population -- outnumbers Canada 10-1.
Here's another way of looking at it: If you took all the horses that have raced at Winnipeg's thoroughbred racetrack, Assiniboia Downs, since the facility opened in 1958, and sent every single one to slaughter, you'd still need at least another 25,000 just to equal last year's Canadian slaughter tally.
And for what? So diners in Belgium can eat horse steak tartare. Order horse fondue in Switzerland. Bite into horse sauerbraten in Germany. And, in Japan, savour sashimi -- raw horse meat sliced thin and soaked in soy sauce.
It is a lucrative enterprise for Canadian exporters, even if it is abhorrent to the 64 per cent of Canadians who told pollster IPSOS Reid in 2004 that they oppose horse slaughter for human consumption.
Unwanted horses -- and there is a glut of them in all of Canada, not just Manitoba -- can fetch as little as 20 cents a pound at auction in Canada, yet command as much as $15 a pound once they're slaughtered, butchered and shipped to Europe and Asia.
And while other countries also slaughter horses for human consumption -- China is the world's leading producer of horse meat -- Canadian horse meat is among the most highly prized in the world for its quality.
So prized, in fact, that in addition to the horses Canada slaughtered last year, this nation also exported an additional 11,413 live horses to be slaughtered in countries like Japan, where diners prefer the taste of freshly killed horse.
Put it altogether and Agriculture Canada says slaughtering horses for human consumption was a $60-million industry in Canada last year.
No slaughterhouse is pretty. But slaughtering horses can be a particularly brutal process.
They're often transported crammed in trailers designed for shorter animals like cows and pigs and must travel, sometimes for days, standing in uncomfortable positions.
Fights break out and horses bite each other. They become entangled and fall, snapping the fragile bones in their legs. A U.S. Department of Agriculture study found that almost 10 per cent of horses that arrived at two Texas slaughterhouses in the late 1990s had welfare problems.
Once they arrive at the slaughterhouse, the end is predictable -- violent and bloody. Sometimes injured and emaciated, horses are corralled in tight pens and must endure the smell of blood and the sound of other horses being killed before they, too, are led into a kill chute.
Once in the chute, a captive bolt pistol containing a retractable 10-centimetre spike is driven into their skulls, ostensibly killing them instantly. But horses are flighty animals, skittish at the best of times, and will often thrash their heads in the chute, making a clean kill sometimes difficult. Witnesses report seeing horses shot with the bolt three and four times before they are finally dead, strung up by their hind legs and cut open. The American Humane Society has condemned the technique as inhumane.
It is a shocking image in a society where horses are commonly regarded as companion animals, more akin to the dog and cat than to a cow or pig, and where children's books like Black Beauty and movies like Seabiscuit celebrate the horse as part of our culture.
Not surprisingly, the industry shuns publicity.
"Talking about horses is kind of a scary thing, especially in the West where people think it's more of a pet than protein," Warren Smith, an Alberta slaughterhouse general manager, told the Edmonton Journal in 2001.
"Every time we say anything about horse in the paper, there's always an uproar. So I don't want to talk about it."
They're a little more up front about the subject in the United States.
"Most of (the horses) here are cripples or have back problems or are crazy in the head," Oliver Kemeske, owner of a Dallas-area slaughterhouse, told the Dallas Morning News in 2002.
"We're a business like any other," Kemeske said. "There are a lot of horses in this country and you people don't eat it. It's just a piece of meat."
Pat Houde, a feedlot owner in Elm Creek, north of Winnipeg, was more blunt when asked to discuss his notoriety on the Internet as one of Canada's leading buyers of horses for slaughter.
"I don't want to say a f---ing thing," offered Houde.
Houde's not kidding. In 1998, he was charged with assault after a crew filming a PMU documentary outside his farm was attacked. The reporter and cameraman both required minor hospital treatment for their injuries.
And in 2001, Houde advised a Vancouver Sun reporter -- doing a story on meat buyers at a Winnipeg horse auction -- that it would be in his best interests to leave the premises. "I said if you know what's good for you," the reporter quoted Houde as saying, "you'll leave."
The result of all the secrecy is a horse-slaughter industry that operates in Canada mostly in the shadows, behind wire fences and concrete walls where anonymous horses tell no tales.
Horses like Good Luck Peter, a filly who raced at the Downs in the 1990s under the direction of trainer Emile Corbel.
Corbel is unabashed about what happened to Good Luck Peter -- and some other horses who failed to perform during the quarter-century he's spent training thoroughbreds at Assiniboia Downs.
"We foxed her for sure," said Corbel, using the racing term for sending a horse to slaughter. (The term comes from an old practice that saw owners of fox farms feed their stock horse meat).
"It was a Manitoba-bred, really small, looked like a new breed of sheep. She couldn't run, was ugly and stupid. So we killed her.
"What else can you do? If you buy a rat, especially a Manitoba rat, you can't give it away. Then you have to kill them."
Corbel says the quality of horses in his barn has improved in recent years and he doubts he's "foxed" a horse for at least "four to five years," opting instead to sell them as jumpers or trail riders.
"If you have a good-looking horse, you can always find a place for them."
But sometimes, even the good-looking ones find themselves staring into the dark abyss.
George Williams, a former trainer at the Downs and the current handicapper for the Free Press, recalls visiting Winnipeg Livestock Sales in 1999, seeking a race horse he'd come to admire but whose owner had shipped her to the auction.
She was just four years old and regally bred, but some leg problems had taken her to the end of the line.
"I was walking through these pens, it was kind of dark, and there were all these horses standing there with their heads down. I don't know what the word to describe it is -- melancholy. They were dirty and standing there in a metal stall. For me, it was just really sad. It was terrible. You could tell they knew this wasn't good, that this was the end of the line.
"I couldn't even recognize her. They all looked like the life had been sucked out of them."
In the end, Williams tracked down the horse he was looking for -- Trail Finder -- and another former Downs mare named Guan River Summer. He purchased both prior to the auction for $1,500.
He later sold Guan River Summer to a breeder as a broodmare. And, after an attempt to get Trail Finder back in race shape failed -- "She had so much heart. I really thought I could get her back to the races" -- he gave her away to a farm to be company to a gelding who had lost his long-time companion.
"I really felt like I did something good."
But then so did Karen Wedge -- and that gesture of good will almost ended very, very badly for her and Special Decision.
Wedge and her husband Terry -- who run horses at the Downs -- once owned Special Decision, who they'd spotted running at the Downs in the mid-1990s.
Oregon-bred, the grey filly was the stereotypical Downs horse -- a cheap claimer who favoured shorter sprints over the longer routes.
The filly won a pair of $5,000 six furlong claiming races in 1995 at the Downs and then stretched out to seven furlongs in 1996 and won again. Combined with two wins earlier in Oregon, she retired after the 1996 campaign with about a $9,000 share of five win purses.
Those weren't overly inspiring numbers, but Karen Wedge says her husband saw something in the horse that he liked. So they traded a saddle horse for Special Decision, and the horse came to live at their farm, ironically enough, just a stone's throw from Winnipeg Livestock Sales.
The Wedges bred Special Decision six times, but only one foal ever made it to the racetrack, and without much success.
The couple decided to stop breeding her last year, and went looking for a new owner.
"We talked to a vet and he told us of this woman who would make a really good owner," Wedge recalls.
How shocked they were, then, to learn that Special Decision -- whom they'd nurtured all those years -- nearly ended up in the slaughterhouse.
And the only reason she hadn't was thanks to the efforts of Morse.
Morse set up Equine Options just last year, modelling it on horse rescue organizations that have proliferated across North America over the past decade.
The lifelong lover of horses felt she had to do something to stop the steady stream of horses flowing into Canada's three horse slaughterhouses.
She takes them in, (she was recently housing seven such horses) feeds them and gets them the veterinary care they need. Some she's even bought at the meat auction, picking up one horse for just $45 because it was so broken down even the meat buyers didn't want it. The lost causes, like that one, are euthanized by a veterinarian, at Morse's expense.
Some get adopted back out on a lease, allowing Morse to maintain control should the new owners get designs on picking up the $200-$400 they'll fetch in the meat ring, as opposed to the $200 they'd have to fork out to a vet to euthanize the horse.
In a world of black and white like this business, you're usually either on one side of the debate or the other.
But Morse can see both sides.
She'll risk her financial independence, on the one hand, to rescue horses she doesn't even know. And then in the next breath, she'll tell you that Houde -- the buyer from Elm Creek -- is actually a pretty decent guy.
"I've met him," says Morse. "He's a very decent man. He's a businessman."
Morse sees the colour of the slaughter issue as something akin to the grey of Special Decision's coat. And she sees it that way precisely because she's seen the slaughterhouse -- twice sending her own horses down that road when she had no money left to care for them.
A horse in training for racing can cost about $10,000 a year to maintain. A horse stabled on a farm costs about $3,000. And the American Association of Equine Practitioners says it costs a minimum of $5 a day in North America -- or about $1,800 a year -- just to keep a horse alive, no matter where you stable him.
"It's not something I'm proud of. I regret it every day. And if I knew then what I know now, I'd have never done it," she says.
"But it's fine and dandy to just say, 'Let's stop slaughtering horses.' But then what do you do with all these unwanted horses? And there's lots of them.
"As far as I'm concerned, there's a fate worse than death. A bolt in the head is far better than years of neglect and abuse."
It's a point of common ground between Morse and the trainer Corbel, who sent Good Luck Peter to the slaughterhouse.
Morse groomed that horse for Corbel and doesn't necessarily disagree with her former employer's contention that for all its gruesome elements, slaughter can actually be a gentler fate for some horses.
"What else are you going to do with horses like that?" Corbel asks. "Turn them out in a field where they'll get eaten by mosquitoes and lose a couple hundred pounds in a couple weeks? Because that is what happens."
Morse's operation offers horse owners another option. "It gives people a choice -- you can send them to auction or you can send them to us," she says.
"We're not politically motivated. We're motivated because some of us have had to watch our horses die."
While Canadians generally oppose the practice when asked, the horsemeat industry in Canada has mostly managed to fly under the public radar.
But the opposite is the case south of the border, where there is a serious movement afoot in the United States to make slaughtering horses for human consumption a crime.
The movement was sparked by the slaughters of two high-profile horses in the past decade.
First up was Exceller. Described by writer William Nack as "one of the finest racehorses in the sport's golden age," Exceller won $1.64 million in stakes races across Europe and North America, peaking in 1978 when he defeated Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew in the Jockey Gold Cup.
It was a hall-of-fame resume and everyone just assumed the horse would go on to a life of leisure. But it turned out the great race horse wasn't much of a stallion, and after changing hands a couple times, he ended up in Sweden in 1991. Six years later, a writer for the Daily Racing Form discovered the horse had been slaughtered. His health had been good. He was still fertile. It was just that his bankrupt owner no longer wanted to pay his bills.
Exceller's groom called in advance the day she took Exceller to be slaughtered. "I made an appointment because I wanted to get it over with quick," she told the Racing Form. "But they were very busy when we got there and we had to wait. Exceller knew what was going on; he didn't want to be there. Standing there with him like that... it made me feel like Judas."
The Daily Racing Form piece was quickly picked up by mainstream news outlets across North America, and the ensuing outrage led to calls for the closing of U.S. slaughterhouses and the setting up of rescue agencies for unwanted horses -- former race horses, specifically.
And then the issue died down again. But six years later, in 2003, the world was shocked to learn that Ferdinand, the winner of the 1986 Kentucky Derby, had most likely been slaughtered in Japan, under similar circumstances as Exceller.
Horse advocates were shocked that despite their efforts, it had happened again.
And suddenly all the tens of thousands of nameless and faceless horses led to slaughter every year in North America had two very prominent voices speaking from the grave.
The result was twofold. First, it led to the establishment of dozens of horse rescue agencies across North America. Many, like Morse's, are mom-and-pop operations that exist on donations. Others, like the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, are massive enterprises with multiple farms and wealthy benefactors.
The other development to arise from the Ferdinand and Exceller stories was the growth of the anti-slaughter lobby. There was growing public clamour to ban the practice outright.
What were once 20 federally licensed horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. had dwindled to just three -- the same number as Canada -- by 2004. And even in Texas -- home to two of them -- polls found that people were against the practice, once they knew it was occurring.
Responding to the changing wave of public opinion -- recent polls show 70 to 90 per cent of Americans believe the practice should be illegal -- the state of California became the first North American jurisdiction to make it illegal not just to kill a horse for human consumption, but also to transport that horse elsewhere to be slaughtered.
Local lawmakers in Texas and Illinois -- home to the only other horse-slaughter plant in the U.S. -- also got into the act, writing new ordinances and enforcing old laws in a bid to shut down the plants.
But the final death knell for the American horse-slaughter industry is yet to come.
A federal spending bill passed by the U.S. Congress last year scrapped funding for the inspectors who are required by law to supervise the slaughter of horses in the U.S. Without inspectors, supporters of the bill figured, the final three horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. would have to be shuttered.
For now, the law has simply opened a new front in the war. The slaughterhouses remain open, with inspectors paid for with private funds.
CHANGES START
But on Sept. 7, the US House of Representatives passed a second bill by a vote of 263-146 which proponents say closes the inspection loophole and outlaws the slaughter of horses for human consumption once and for all in the U.S..
The bill must still pass the U.S. Senate, however. And that body has been reluctant in the past to move on the issue. Time's also working against proponents of a ban on slaughter, with the current session of Congress slated to wrap up at the end of the month.
CHANGES END
It's no surprise that, given the politically charged climate in the United States, the number of horses being slaughtered south of the border has plummeted from 315,192 in 1990 to 65,976 in 2004. And it's also no surprise that U.S. meat packers are now turning to Canada to pick up some of the slack.
In 2003, 21,434 live horses were imported into Canada for slaughter -- almost all from the U.S., according to Agriculture Canada. Two years ago, the number was 19,725. And last year, Canada imported 17,324.
Not everyone is happy with the anti-horse slaughter bill in Congress.
Some opponents are predictable -- the American meat-packing industry and the handful of horse slaughterhouses that have managed to stay open.
But they also have an unlikely ally in the American Association of Equine Practitioners, who have launched a vigorous media campaign -- including advertisements in the Daily Racing Form -- opposing any ban on slaughter.
The AAEP argues that in an industry where the jockeys, trainers and owners are all compensated monetarily for the roles they play, only horses have nothing protecting their retirement.
And in the absence of a safety net, the veterinarians argue that banning slaughter will only increase the number of horses suffering from abuse and neglect.
On the other side of the argument, proponents of the ban in California point out there has been no increase in reports of abuse or neglect since they put their slaughter ban into effect eight years ago. (They also say reports of horse theft have declined 35 per cent as well).
Still, the North American horse racing industry is beginning to acknowledge that they are part of the problem of unwanted horses, and seeking solutions.
In New York, following the news of Ferdinand's death, a $2 "Ferdinand Fee" was introduced at racetracks, which owners can voluntarily pay every time they enter a horse in a race.
Reports say most New York owners are paying the fee, and the tens of thousands of dollars collected so far have gone to groups that provide retirement homes for old thoroughbreds.
There's also been the hugely popular 'Mo-neigh' program, which sees owners of prominent horses give their equine charges some paint and paper for an hour and let them splash nose and hoof prints about. The resulting paintings are often otherworldly, and some Moneighs have fetched thousands of dollars at Internet auction.
The proceeds all go to a U.S.-based thoroughbred rescue agency.
And even in Canada, at least one track has gotten into the act. Toronto's Woodbine Race Track and its horsemen recently donated $20,000, their take of a stake race, to the Ontario-based LongRun Thoroughbred Retirement Society.
As part of the same promotion, the track also allowed fans to adopt a horse for a day for $10 and sold bottles of dirt from the old main Woodbine track (currently being replaced by a new synthetic surface) for $5 apiece.
There is nothing similar at Assiniboia Downs. Morse, the local horse rescuer, says she's received some support from the local association of owners and trainers.
But the track management seems lukewarm to the idea of introducing a Ferdinand Fee or staging some other promotion to support Morse's group.
A $2 Ferdinand Fee in Manitoba could raise about $8,000 during every Downs live meet. "Granted it's a good cause," said Manitoba Jockey Club president Harvey Warner. "But I don't know if we could fund the needs of the whole province on $8,000.
"This isn't something at the top of our agenda."
Warner did say the track would seriously consider the idea if it came to them from the owners and trainers at the track.
At least one trainer -- and an unlikely one, at that -- said he thinks a Ferdinand Fee is a great idea.
"I'd pay it," said Corbel. "I could get behind that for sure."
An increasing number of people, it seems, are coming around to the same way of thinking.
Galloping
gourmet fare
People have eaten horse since the end of the last Ice Age, when horses ran wild and were a staple of ancient diets.
But the tide of public opinion began to turn in the year 732, when Pope Gregory III issued an edict forbidding Roman Catholics from eating horse meat. There is a similar ban on the consumption of horse within Judaism, and Muslims were also advised against eating horsemeat, though not forbidden.
Yet the practice of eating horse persists in Asia and certain parts of Europe to this day. In France, where horse is still considered a delicacy, the practice of eating horse is believed to date back to the Battle of Eylau in 1807, when Napoleon's starving troops were urged to eat their dead horses.
Number of horses slaughtered
in Canada in 2005
48,715
Horsemeat exported in 2005
11.7 million kg
Industry value
$60 million
The two leading importers of Canadian
horsemeat are France and Japan.
Canadian horsemeat imported
by France in 2005
3.7 million kg
Canadian horsemeat imported
by Japan in 2005
3.4 million kg
THE San Francisco Chronicle reports not a single restaurant or grocery story in the United States currently offers horsemeat for sale -- although it is legal to eat horsemeat there.
But there is a niche market for Canadian horsemeat in Quebec.
While Agriculture Canada doesn't have statistics available on the amount consumed annually in Quebec, industry group Equine Canada estimates consumption in the province to be about 1.2 million kilograms annually -- or about 10 per cent of the export market.
The Canadian horsemeat industry has been in slight decline in recent years. In 2003, the country's horsemeat exports were valued at $63.6 million. In 2004, that number had dropped to $61.7 million. And last year, it fell a little further to $60 million.
Many Canadians are surprised to learn there's a horsemeat industry in Canada. That may be because the size of the industry pales in comparison to Canadian exports of other kinds of meat.
While the horsemeat exports from Canada in 2005 were valued at $60 million, the Canadian beef industry exported $1.8 billion worth of beef in the same period and the Canadian pork industry exported $2.8 billion worth of pork last year.
The horses do all the running, but it's the people involved in horse racing who get the cash.
HOW THE MONEY
will be distributed
at Assiniboia Downs
this year:
Total Purse Money:
$5 million
Distributed to trainers
(10 per cent):
$500,000
Distributed to jockeys:
(10 per cent):
$500,000
Distributed to owners
(80 per cent):
$4,000,000
From hero to horse meat
FERDINAND defied the odds all his life, right up until the moment he ended in a Japanese slaughterhouse in 2002.
A chestnut colt by the super-sire, Nijinski II, Ferdinand went off at odds of 17-1 in the 1986 Kentucky Derby and appeared to be beaten as he faced a wall of horses in front of him as the horses turned for home down the fabled stretch at Louisville's Churchill Downs. But then a sliver of daylight opened up between horses and hall of fame jockey Willie Shoemaker spotted the opening he needed.
Racing writer William Nack, author of the signature biography of Secretariat, described what happened next:
"Tugging on his left rein, he drove Ferdy for the breach, splitting horses along the way, then set sail on the rail in pursuit of the leaders. Pouring it on, Ferdinand ran them down in the cavalry charge to the wire and raced off to win it by 2-1/2 lengths."
It would be the last of four Derby victories for the 54-year-old Shoemaker, who five years later would be paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident.
Ferdinand went on to race three more years, was named Horse of the Year in 1987 and was retired from horse racing in 1989 as what was then the fifth leading money-earner all-time.
In 1994, he was sold to a Japanese breeding farm, where his services were initially much coveted. But by 2000, he was bred to just 10 mares all year and he was sold to a horse dealer in 2001.
In 2003, a writer for The Blood-Horse researching a story about the horse, discovered he'd quietly been sent to a slaughterhouse the year before.
I
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