Robert Redford Calls for an End to Horse Slaughter
The cruel industry traffic of horses from us to Mexico
Mexico has become one of the leading producers of horse meat in the world, but allegations documented by NGOs reveal the cruelty that is transported and gives death to the animals from United States
Texas • as every day, the fleet trucking of freight goes very early Ranch on the outskirts of Presidio and begins to circulate through its rural roads, lifting large dust clouds that smell like fertilizer and diesel in its path. The convoy is directed to the border with Mexico and in a few minutes will leave behind South Texas into the Chihuahuan desert.
Within minutes, the transport will be parked on the side of the garita de Ojinaga, where it will wait to receive the necessary documentation to make the crossing. But unlike other trailers hoping to move from one country to another with all sorts of products at this time, sounds come from inside. Greater detail, relinchidos and punches. They are hooves that cocean against metal.
If one comes to peek through their vents, you can see some snouts come to sniff the intruder. It's horses: are en route to his death. They have been bought by Mexican traces, dedicated to the production of horse meat for export, a controversial industry that Mexicans know little and that critics say falls squarely in the land of the cruel.
"The way which is transported and then sacrifices himself to these animals is cruel and inhumane. We are convinced that there are no animals for human consumption", says Valerie Pringle, specialist in equine protection of human society of the United States, a non-governmental organization dedicated to ensuring the ethical treatment of animals. "Is made to these horses suffer from terrible form on their way to slaughterhouses in Mexico".
Sonja Meadows, Director of Animals Angels, another pro animal grouping, the second: "we have followed those trucks, loaded with up to 40 horses for more than 36 hours and at no time been given water or allowed to leave to rest (...)" the production of food is no excuse for the inhuman treatment".
It covered Pringle and Meadows is a phenomenon of recent stamp which has led Mexico to become thing of half a decade into one of the leading producers of meat of horse in the world, only behind Argentina and Canada in America and over powers such as France and the Netherlands. Since the U.S. Government banned in 2007 killing horses way industrialized by considering it an inhuman practice, the killing has migrated to the South. Thousands of horses are imported every year to Mexican territory to sacrifice them.
According to data from the Servicio Nacional de Sanidad, Inocuidad y Calidad Agroalimentaria (SENASICA) obtained via the Federal transparency law, in five years, 321 thousand horses crossed the Rio Grande and ended up in one of five trails - located in Chihuahua, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes-with authorization from the Secretariat of agriculture, livestock and fisheries. On average, are imported 175 sacrificial horses a day.
Ojinaga and Presidio could be defined as the epicenter of the binational horses for trail traffic. Only in la garita shared by both cities, 34 thousand horses were interned in 2012, with figures updated until November. Other 32,000 did for Piedras Negras and Ciudad Juarez.
Before crossing them to Mexican territory, different receivers ranches accumulate the horses in pens of El Paso, Eagle Pass, and Presidio. According to data of the United States Department of agriculture, the heads may come from several thousands of kilometers radius, from States as far away as Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma and even Minnesota, on the border with Canada.
In this part of South Texas and Northern Chihuahua that equine flow evidence you can see at a glance. Both of those who come from them will be. On ranches, hundreds of animals graze waiting to be loaded into trailers that are going to Mexico.
The butt - some take more than 40 horses-, trucks will then be on the Poe and they will be reviewed by Sagarpa staff, looking for infections or defects. Once approved the paperwork, they internarán in Mexican territory, on a long route that takes them by road to traces of Camargo, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. During the trip, sometimes it will be possible to see the horses get their heads to try and get some air.
"Every day see them pass", says a soldier stationed at a checkpoint midway between Ojinaga and Camargo, on a route that traffic is scarce. "Trucks and trucks full of horses. It is the only thing that happens on this road."
***
On average, a horse can be removed up to 150 kg of meat, intestines for sausages, strings for musical instruments and equipment for glue. But in the consumption of a cutting horse where you enter an openly contentious issue. Many countries reject the idea on the grounds that they are pet and bred won not with the specific purpose of slaughter.
On the other hand, drugs that are used to treat horses throughout his life must not come to the food chain. "A horse is not a chicken. It is not a cow. Pringle, who stressed that his organization is suspected drugs provided them have serious risks to human health,"insisted that among the huge flow of horses that runs from United States to Mexico, are being slaughtered some that have hazardous substances in his system.
The debate on eating horse meat ends up being subjective. But largely the Mexicans are not those who consume it. According to figures from the National Institute of geography, statistics, and Informatics (INEGI), in a matter of a decade the equine slaughter in Mexico went from marginal activity - focused on the palate of a few consumer-, multibillion-dollar industry, but with a distinctly foreign market.
For example, the Statistical Yearbook of foreign trade recorded between 2009 and 2012 were exported to more than a thousand 700 million pesos "of horse meat of the species" to 13 countries on three continents. Horse cuts produced in Mexico buyers have emerged in Belgium, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Swaziland, among some of the few Nations in the world taking it without taboo.
It is a particularly high rise if one takes into account that the industry did not exist before. Since 2004, the profits of the Mexican traces have grown 500 percent. Today they play the 468 million pesos. The production of meat for export has expanded also to triple digits.
For 2011, the figures reached a historic record, with some 10,000 747 tonnes of meat produced, the bulk of which comes from two plants of Zacatecas, Fresnillo and Jerez. It is one of the higher yields around the world, according to statistics from the United Nations for agriculture (FAO). At that rate, and without being a country where there is a significant consumer of horsemeat, Mexico could become one of the world leaders in its production before the end of the Decade.
But the rapid rise of this industry has had a strong price. At the same time that the closure of the traces in the United States has brought unprecedented profits to those who are engaged in the business of horse slaughter in Mexico, animal protection organizations have documented a long string of violations and mistreatment that open the question whether these horses - even if your final destination is the trace - are suffering more than you need.
On its own, this reporter was able to observe first-hand how, in Presidio from a ranch truck was parked in a lot for three hours, with an average temperature of 35 degrees. During that time, as export papers prepared, it was possible to listen to the horses give kicks against the doors, unless no one approached to provide them with water.
***
One of many routes that it has been dubbed by activists "the death road" starts about 400 kilometers north of the border with Chihuahua, in the town of Los Lunas, New Mexico in. In the wake of the ban on horse slaughter in the United States, thousands of horses are taken to auction, the Southwest Livestock Auction company.
U.S. and Mexican businessmen come every week to do business and buy animals whose final destination is the trace. In the industry are known as killer buyers (buyers of death).
The price assigned to some of those horses is minimal: sometimes fail to $5 per head, despite the fact that among the lots there are young and healthy foals whose market value could be 50 times that. After being sold, hacks and horses begin a long path marked by a cruel treatment.
Millennium had access to a series of videos in a hidden by researchers from the Organization Animals Angels, which, at the end of 2012, followed from beginning to end several of these shipments, bound for the traces in Camargo, Fresnillo and Aguascalientes. The images listed different signs of abuse, as the drivers with sticks beating horses, chopping them with Puya from outside of the trucks and leaving them outdoors, despite the high temperatures of the desert.
Inside a trailer, there is a horse falling and is crushed by his companions. In another, the animals are completely crowded, unable to move, covered in manure. Some have open, bleeding sores or infections in the eyes. An image taken in a pen, shows a Mare and a foal deaths, side-by-side.
Animals Angels plans to launch an advertising campaign in Europe to denounce the conditions in which Mexican horse meat is produced. "Our Organization has worked on the issue since 2007. We have conducted hundreds of investigations and we are currently preparing a campaign in Europe to raise awareness of consumers about the brutality and cruelty of this industry in Mexico, "said Meadows.
Its researchers have also infiltrated traces of Jerez, Camargo, and Aguascalientes, recording in a hidden extremely graphic videos. According to Meadows, they prove that even to point of being slaughtered, the horses are subjected to an experience that is too cruel.
"Based on our observations, there is excessive cruelty. On the floor of Jerez, for example we saw live horses that were being dragged with a cable by its hind legs. We filmed embryos dead in the yard. And on the floor of Camargo saw very low standards,"said.
***
The United States Humane Society also has been launched against the industry of the trail in Mexico. In a hidden, one of its researchers was able to document makes indiscriminate use of an instrument known as "lace", a knife usually used to kill cattle, with much less long than of the equine necks in the slaughterhouse of Juarez.
"Unfortunately once these animals have been designated as a meat product, any attention to their needs are thrown out the window. Which is unfortunate because they are animals for slaughter", he deplored.
Within minutes, the transport will be parked on the side of the garita de Ojinaga, where it will wait to receive the necessary documentation to make the crossing. But unlike other trailers hoping to move from one country to another with all sorts of products at this time, sounds come from inside. Greater detail, relinchidos and punches. They are hooves that cocean against metal.
If one comes to peek through their vents, you can see some snouts come to sniff the intruder. It's horses: are en route to his death. They have been bought by Mexican traces, dedicated to the production of horse meat for export, a controversial industry that Mexicans know little and that critics say falls squarely in the land of the cruel.
"The way which is transported and then sacrifices himself to these animals is cruel and inhumane. We are convinced that there are no animals for human consumption", says Valerie Pringle, specialist in equine protection of human society of the United States, a non-governmental organization dedicated to ensuring the ethical treatment of animals. "Is made to these horses suffer from terrible form on their way to slaughterhouses in Mexico".
Sonja Meadows, Director of Animals Angels, another pro animal grouping, the second: "we have followed those trucks, loaded with up to 40 horses for more than 36 hours and at no time been given water or allowed to leave to rest (...)" the production of food is no excuse for the inhuman treatment".
It covered Pringle and Meadows is a phenomenon of recent stamp which has led Mexico to become thing of half a decade into one of the leading producers of meat of horse in the world, only behind Argentina and Canada in America and over powers such as France and the Netherlands. Since the U.S. Government banned in 2007 killing horses way industrialized by considering it an inhuman practice, the killing has migrated to the South. Thousands of horses are imported every year to Mexican territory to sacrifice them.
According to data from the Servicio Nacional de Sanidad, Inocuidad y Calidad Agroalimentaria (SENASICA) obtained via the Federal transparency law, in five years, 321 thousand horses crossed the Rio Grande and ended up in one of five trails - located in Chihuahua, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes-with authorization from the Secretariat of agriculture, livestock and fisheries. On average, are imported 175 sacrificial horses a day.
The trend is upward.
***Ojinaga and Presidio could be defined as the epicenter of the binational horses for trail traffic. Only in la garita shared by both cities, 34 thousand horses were interned in 2012, with figures updated until November. Other 32,000 did for Piedras Negras and Ciudad Juarez.
Before crossing them to Mexican territory, different receivers ranches accumulate the horses in pens of El Paso, Eagle Pass, and Presidio. According to data of the United States Department of agriculture, the heads may come from several thousands of kilometers radius, from States as far away as Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma and even Minnesota, on the border with Canada.
In this part of South Texas and Northern Chihuahua that equine flow evidence you can see at a glance. Both of those who come from them will be. On ranches, hundreds of animals graze waiting to be loaded into trailers that are going to Mexico.
The butt - some take more than 40 horses-, trucks will then be on the Poe and they will be reviewed by Sagarpa staff, looking for infections or defects. Once approved the paperwork, they internarán in Mexican territory, on a long route that takes them by road to traces of Camargo, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. During the trip, sometimes it will be possible to see the horses get their heads to try and get some air.
"Every day see them pass", says a soldier stationed at a checkpoint midway between Ojinaga and Camargo, on a route that traffic is scarce. "Trucks and trucks full of horses. It is the only thing that happens on this road."
***
On average, a horse can be removed up to 150 kg of meat, intestines for sausages, strings for musical instruments and equipment for glue. But in the consumption of a cutting horse where you enter an openly contentious issue. Many countries reject the idea on the grounds that they are pet and bred won not with the specific purpose of slaughter.
On the other hand, drugs that are used to treat horses throughout his life must not come to the food chain. "A horse is not a chicken. It is not a cow. Pringle, who stressed that his organization is suspected drugs provided them have serious risks to human health,"insisted that among the huge flow of horses that runs from United States to Mexico, are being slaughtered some that have hazardous substances in his system.
The debate on eating horse meat ends up being subjective. But largely the Mexicans are not those who consume it. According to figures from the National Institute of geography, statistics, and Informatics (INEGI), in a matter of a decade the equine slaughter in Mexico went from marginal activity - focused on the palate of a few consumer-, multibillion-dollar industry, but with a distinctly foreign market.
For example, the Statistical Yearbook of foreign trade recorded between 2009 and 2012 were exported to more than a thousand 700 million pesos "of horse meat of the species" to 13 countries on three continents. Horse cuts produced in Mexico buyers have emerged in Belgium, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Sweden and Swaziland, among some of the few Nations in the world taking it without taboo.
It is a particularly high rise if one takes into account that the industry did not exist before. Since 2004, the profits of the Mexican traces have grown 500 percent. Today they play the 468 million pesos. The production of meat for export has expanded also to triple digits.
For 2011, the figures reached a historic record, with some 10,000 747 tonnes of meat produced, the bulk of which comes from two plants of Zacatecas, Fresnillo and Jerez. It is one of the higher yields around the world, according to statistics from the United Nations for agriculture (FAO). At that rate, and without being a country where there is a significant consumer of horsemeat, Mexico could become one of the world leaders in its production before the end of the Decade.
But the rapid rise of this industry has had a strong price. At the same time that the closure of the traces in the United States has brought unprecedented profits to those who are engaged in the business of horse slaughter in Mexico, animal protection organizations have documented a long string of violations and mistreatment that open the question whether these horses - even if your final destination is the trace - are suffering more than you need.
On its own, this reporter was able to observe first-hand how, in Presidio from a ranch truck was parked in a lot for three hours, with an average temperature of 35 degrees. During that time, as export papers prepared, it was possible to listen to the horses give kicks against the doors, unless no one approached to provide them with water.
***
One of many routes that it has been dubbed by activists "the death road" starts about 400 kilometers north of the border with Chihuahua, in the town of Los Lunas, New Mexico in. In the wake of the ban on horse slaughter in the United States, thousands of horses are taken to auction, the Southwest Livestock Auction company.
U.S. and Mexican businessmen come every week to do business and buy animals whose final destination is the trace. In the industry are known as killer buyers (buyers of death).
The price assigned to some of those horses is minimal: sometimes fail to $5 per head, despite the fact that among the lots there are young and healthy foals whose market value could be 50 times that. After being sold, hacks and horses begin a long path marked by a cruel treatment.
Millennium had access to a series of videos in a hidden by researchers from the Organization Animals Angels, which, at the end of 2012, followed from beginning to end several of these shipments, bound for the traces in Camargo, Fresnillo and Aguascalientes. The images listed different signs of abuse, as the drivers with sticks beating horses, chopping them with Puya from outside of the trucks and leaving them outdoors, despite the high temperatures of the desert.
Inside a trailer, there is a horse falling and is crushed by his companions. In another, the animals are completely crowded, unable to move, covered in manure. Some have open, bleeding sores or infections in the eyes. An image taken in a pen, shows a Mare and a foal deaths, side-by-side.
Animals Angels plans to launch an advertising campaign in Europe to denounce the conditions in which Mexican horse meat is produced. "Our Organization has worked on the issue since 2007. We have conducted hundreds of investigations and we are currently preparing a campaign in Europe to raise awareness of consumers about the brutality and cruelty of this industry in Mexico, "said Meadows.
Its researchers have also infiltrated traces of Jerez, Camargo, and Aguascalientes, recording in a hidden extremely graphic videos. According to Meadows, they prove that even to point of being slaughtered, the horses are subjected to an experience that is too cruel.
"Based on our observations, there is excessive cruelty. On the floor of Jerez, for example we saw live horses that were being dragged with a cable by its hind legs. We filmed embryos dead in the yard. And on the floor of Camargo saw very low standards,"said.
***
The United States Humane Society also has been launched against the industry of the trail in Mexico. In a hidden, one of its researchers was able to document makes indiscriminate use of an instrument known as "lace", a knife usually used to kill cattle, with much less long than of the equine necks in the slaughterhouse of Juarez.
The result, say specialists, is needless suffering for the animal, even in violation of the laws of United States and the European Union, which explicitly prohibit the acquisition of meat for horses that are slaughtered in inhumane way.
"Some plants in Mexico use what is known as a knife of lace, which is nailed to the base of the neck of the horse, that would have to cripple it. But not necessarily cut the nerves. I.e., even though he is hamstrung, when they hang him and open them pit, we argue that they are probably feeling the pain. Are they still conscious,"said Pringle. "For us, the only way to kill a horse is through the use of drugs with a trained veterinarian." But it does not usually happen. Not with food."Unfortunately once these animals have been designated as a meat product, any attention to their needs are thrown out the window. Which is unfortunate because they are animals for slaughter", he deplored.
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