Canada: Land of the dead horses

Canada and horses. Extensive landscapes with herds. Groups of riders in the Rocky Mountains conveying campfire romance. This is how the tourism platforms and brochures portray the “green” façade of Canada. If you look behind, you will find the misery of tens of thousands of horses. Industrial factory farming of so called “slaughter” horses in huge feedlots. Here the horses are fed sick with concentrated feed. The only goal of the operators is to fatten the animals to their maximum slaughter weight. There is no investment in veterinary care. No money is spent on the protection against extreme temperatures reaching from minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter to plus 40 degrees Celsius in summer. The horses are left out in the open. Mares in labour are left to their own devices. New-born foals freeze to death at birth.

Canada also slaughters thousands of US-horses for the EU and Switzerland. An obligatory six-month quarantine for horses imported from the US is intending to protect consumers from possible drug residues in the meat of the slaughtered horses. This rule extends the suffering of the horses in the Canadian fattening farms.

Animal Welfare Foundation / Tierschutzbund Zürich, Animals’ Angels Inc. and the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition have been documenting the horse feedlots at the Bouvry slaughterhouse for many years. We were able to reduce the number of slaughtered horses from 90,000 to 30,000 horses per year. However, every tortured horse is one too many. Our recent investigation from February 2021 shows that the suffering of horses continues.

In our petition to the EU Commission, we call for an import suspension of horse meat from cruel production. Please offer your support with your signature: www.change.org/stopp-horsemeat-imports-de