WASHINGTON, DC — The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is urging Congress to ban the export of U.S. horses for slaughter after the release of video footage obtained through an undercover Canadian investigation by the Canadian Horse Defence (sic) Coalition (CHDC).
The HSUS said the video confirms horrible abuses inherent in the slaughter of horses for human consumption and illustrates the need for the US Congress to bar the export of tens of thousands of US horses each year to slaughter plants across the border.
“At the Bouvry Exports plant in Canada, a chestnut horse is shot three times while a gray mare waits in the kill box,” Wayne Pacelle, HSUS president and CEO said.
“As the chestnut horse panics and struggles, as horses are biologically wired to do, the gray mare is shot. She remains alive and kicking even as two more .22 caliber shots are fired at her face. She languishes. The pattern repeats itself.”
Pacelle said the CHDC”s video footage, titled “Chamber of Carnage,” further demonstrates what The HSUS has documented for years about horse slaughter.
“Foreign-owned horse slaughterhouses have set up shop just over the border and US horses will continue to suffer both during long-distance shipping and then during a gruesome butchering process, all for the culinary whims of foreign gourmands,” he said.
Pacelle said some of the horses in the CHDC footage bear tags from the United States Department of Agriculture, indicating animals shown in the video originated in the United States. The video can be viewed on the HSUS”s Web site at www.humanesociety.org. Click on the “News and Video” link.
“Every day while Congress delays, ?killer buyers” are transporting American horses to Canada and Mexico and there the animals are meeting an awful demise, often after a painful and harrowing journey,” Pacelle said.
“This new investigation affirms again that there is unmistakable cruelty in the industry and it will only end when the Congress passes the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act.”
Pacelle said that the CHDC”s footage is consistent with similar footage obtained The HSUS of horses cruelly butchered in foreign-owned plants on U.S. soil as well as that of horse slaughter operations in Mexico.
He said one theme runs through every investigation: U.S. horses are not generally raised for food and where this trade occurs, there is inherent abuse.
“Horse slaughter is not a form of humane euthanasia, something the CHDC”s video clearly shows,” Pacelle said. “Horses are trusting, majestic creatures and extreme flight animals. They fight or try to flee and they suffer in these slaughter houses.”
Pacelle said that approximately 100,000 horses are purchased by “kill buyers” at auctions across the nation.
He said “kill buyers” frequently outbid good horse owners to secure the fattest, healthiest horses, which are then transported cross-country, often without food, water or rest, to slaughter plants in Canada and Mexico, where they are butchered.
“Despite Canada”s regulations and inspection standards for plants that process horses, this investigation shows how ineffective they are at preventing suffering,” Pacelle said.
