Disturbing pictures of alleged animal abuse at a Saskatchewan horse meat plant posted on a website are erroneous and shocking to the plant owners.
“I don’t know what to say. It is not right,” said Ken Piller, chief executive officer of Natural Valley Farms at Neudorf, Sask., which processes up to 600 horses a week.
Animals’ Angels Canada and the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition distributed information earlier this month documenting concerns at the plant. The information included photos alleged to have been taken at the Neudorf plant.
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Piller said he was approached last year by a news crew proposing a story about Natural Valley. He refused but suspects pictures were taken while he was speaking with a reporter, who said she was with CBC. He was told later the CBC was hired by the Animals’ Angels, an international animal rights group opposed to horse slaughter.
Piller has filed a complaint to CBC ombudsman Vince Carlin, who is investigating. He said the Regina affiliate told him it did not assign anyone to investigate the plant.
“For the CBC to be commissioned by an activist group is unlikely in the extreme,” said Carlin.
Natural Valley is a federally inspected and European Union approved custom plant, which was killing cattle until the market declined last year. Then it began horse slaughter operations.
Piller said European customers have assured him they are not cancelling their contracts.
“They have been dealing with this kind of thing 20 years before we heard of it,” he said.
The website has pictures of a compost pile full of horse heads and other slaughterhouse waste. Another photo of an unborn foal with its ears removed and entrails exposed has flies swarming around it. Piller said the picture could not have come from his plant because the crew arrived when temperatures were -30 C, when there would be no flies.
The plant was also accused by the groups of not properly stunning animals before bleeding them out, which Piller also denies.
“If anybody wants to see the truth, I’ll show them the truth,” he said.
The plant accepts horses from Canada and the United States and he said they do not arrive in double deck trucks, as the activists charged. He said the second table deck inside the trucks has been removed.
The two activist groups contacted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with their concerns. Investigation of the plant showed it is compliant with all regulations, said CFIA spokesperson Anne Allan.
“These are serious allegations. If they were true they would represent profound violations of the regulations and we need to stop it from happening. We take them seriously regardless of who they are,” Allan said.
Full-time CFIA inspectors and veterinarians are at the plant site every day, she said. After the complaint, additional third party auditors looked at the plant and found no violations.
Bill desBarres, a professional mediator in Medicine Hat, Alta., defended the slaughter plant saying Animals’ Angels is an activist group promoting a vegan lifestyle. “I can tell you the Animals’ Angels’ footage and documentation is erroneous and exaggerated and wrong,” said desBarres.
