A petition is circulating in Canada to stop the import of American slaughter horses to protect the Canadian industry.The petition, led by a group of horse breeders, wants the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to abandon the requirement for complete traceability on slaughter horses.The petition is on-line at www.horsepetition.com and paper copies are available for submission to the federal government until mid July, said spokesperson Arnold McKee of Oyen, Alta.“This traceability is a totally impossible thing for horse breeders to even cope with,” said McKee, who raises mustangs gathered from the British army base near Medicine Hat.“We all have records of what we do with our livestock,” he said.However, many people rarely use medications and have difficulty proving the animals are drug free. Others may lie.The equine information document becomes mandatory July 31 and CFIA inspected processing facilities in Canada must have complete records for domestic and imported slaughter animals.The document includes a standard description of the animal or unique lot identification, as well as a comprehensive record of its medical treatment for the last six months.Horse owners find the requirements onerous and object to extra costs involved in record keeping.McKee does not object to animals going for meat but since the United States closed its plants in 2007, thousands of additional horses have arrived at Canada’s three federal plants and created a glut in the market.“None of us raise horses for meat. We raise them for pleasure horses and performance horses but unfortunately in their lifetime sooner or later something has to be done with them. We have to have the processing industry in the horse industry.”McKee does not expect the government to act on a ban but he wants legislators to pay attention to what is happening to the domestic industry as prices collapse.Using the meat market as their guide, some buyers refuse to pay more for quality horses from breeders because they can buy cheaper ones at the auction.McKee has two cull horses that might have fetched $900-$1,000 a few years ago. In June, the local auction mart quoted a price of $100 for a cull horse or $50 for a yearling filly.Bill des Barres of the Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada said few numbers are available on how many horses have arrived from the U.S. but they have influenced the market.Meat prices vary from 30 cents to $1 per pound but most trade on the low end, he said.“The horses coming in from the United States certainly has an influence on that. Because they don’t have processing plants, horses are going very much cheaper and lots of them are being turned loose and are subject to horrendous deaths by predators and starvation, ” des Barres said.Many imports do not carry proper traceability documents, he added.The horses are supposed to come in sealed trucks but the manifest may list them as riding or feeder horses to avoid paying U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection fees.In the future, only six border points will accept bulk loads of horses.“Traceability is a problem and we don’t want animals treated inhumanely under any circumstances, but we also are fully aware that a lot of the people who are transporting them, especially the horses coming from the United States, they don’t really care. They take them out of one truck and put them in another and get them across the border,” des Barres said.Agriculture Canada’s most recent statistics show 111,236 horses were killed in federally and provincially inspected plants in 2008.
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