WINNIPEG — Start asking questions about the pregnant mare’s urine industry and you are bound to get a few in return.
“Which side are you on?” asked James Neufeld, Manitoba Agriculture’s co-ordinator of veterinary services, as he considered a query on the slaughter horse industry.
Recent campaigns by animal activists have made the livestock industry wary.
“Everybody is getting a little bit more paranoid,” said Rob Smith, former president of the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association and chair of the Manitoba Farm Animal Council.
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The Manitoba council, one of several across Canada formed by commodity groups to defend the animal industry, recently had to defend itself from angry farmers who mistook its mandate when they saw its booth at an agricultural show.
Undercover activists
But it’s paranoia laced with reality.
Smith said there have been instances where activists have posed as horse buyers to get into PMU barns to take photographs.
When PMU producer Charlie Knockaert was quoted in a Winnipeg newspaper as saying industry members were going to visit schools to let students know how their industry operates, he received harassing telephone calls warning him to keep his “propaganda” to himself.
Smith said the Farm Animal Council draws the animal industry together to combat all untrue allegations — whether they are animal rights groups targeting PMU operators or environmentalists challenging hog operations.
Clean record
But he said the livestock industry’s main ammunition is ensuring animals are treated humanely and their environmental record is clean.
Neufeld said the PMU industry has made vast improvements in recent years by imposing standards for how the horses should be treated.
PMU operators now operate under a code of practice which is enforced by the only buyer of the urine. Ayerst Organics Ltd. officials make routine inspections of PMU operations. “It’s got the big stick in terms of holding quotas,” he said.
But one allegation by animal rights activists against the PMU industry is true.
While the horses are assured of humane treatment while on the farms, there are currently no standards in place overseeing their transportation.
Too often, horses are transported hundreds of miles to feedlots or slaughter in trucks designed to haul cattle. “They are not appropriately designed for horses.”
Neufeld said federal officials are working with the livestock industry, transportation industry and the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies to develop standards governing the transportation of horses.
