Source: Wellston Journal
“Animal welfare is everybody‘s responsibility and my government will not stand for cruelty to animals,”
Australia opens probe into secret torture & slaughter of hundreds of racehorses for pet & HUMAN food Queensland state authorities are investigating the shocking slaughter of some 500 retired racehorses a month at an abattoir where the creatures are allegedly tortured before they’re turned into meat for animals and humans.
Now those authorities have opened an investigation into Meramist, one of just two facilities in Australia licensed to produce and export horse meat for human consumption, state premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced on Tuesday, reiterating that she was “sickened and appalled” by what she saw.
“Animal welfare is everybody‘s responsibility and my government will not stand for cruelty to animals,” Palaszczuk told reporters, pointing out that Queensland has the strictest laws against animal cruelty in the country. The Queensland Racing Integrity Commission will oversee the probe, and a separate investigation conducted by Biosecurity Queensland was launched on Friday after the ABC program aired.
While slaughtering racehorses is not illegal in the state of Queensland, it is in New South Wales, and the ABC report revealed some horses were illicitly transported across state lines to be butchered instead of rehomed in accordance with state law. The horses’ identities were traced using their branding and microchips, and cross-referencing with race records revealed they had won a total of $5 million in prize money for their owners before they were sent to the slaughterhouse. Horse racing in Australia is a $1 billion industry, and some 14,000 foals are born into it each year.
From Meramist, the meat is shipped to Europe and Asia for human consumption and processed into animal food – some of which is fed, ironically, to racing greyhounds. The meat is also supplied to kennels and pet shops.
Australian racing authorities that just 0.4 to 1 percent of the 8,500 horses retired from racing each year are slaughtered, but state regulators to ABC they are unable to keep up even with the national rule requiring them to trace every horse from birth to retirement – and they aren’t required to track them after that.
That needs to change, Racing Queensland chief executive Brendan Parnell told us . “A national horse traceability program is critical” – including “a system to track horse movement” once they retire.
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Uncategorized
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Heres a longer article telling about “wastage” – as the racing industry describes speculative overbreeding and loss of horses to training and racing injuries
https://www.animals24-7.org/2019/10/31/new-study-shows-the-value-of-slaughter-to-race-horse-breeders/
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The whole slaughter issue is everybody’s issue! Selfish owners buy babies as commodity’s like they were stock. And try to bring them along in cheap claiming races! So are destroyed before they ever have chance to begin! I am tired of these ignorant owners, trainers and vets who will do anything for a dime! It’s the same as the Quarterhorse people. They use slaughter as a culling mechanism! They treat them like yesterday’s trash like other owners! Why have we tolerated this over the years? The fight to end this has probably been going long before 2001! Horse racing has hit the bottom of the barrel! To say that even one death on the race track is ok is disgusting! No horses should ever die especially babies! Stop racing them so young! Stop racing them on Lasix and other drugs! As horse owners we know the power of these drugs! If I attended races in the past I would tell them not to bet on horses listed on Lasix! I detest racing now and DO NOT support it! They all know better, but NO ONE is taking active steps! I will say there is support for the Safe Act. However, there is nothing on the horizon regarding racing babies or conditions with regard to racing! And that disgusts me! I have a 5 year old Arabian mare I have started under saddle. And I consider her a young horse with a limited attention span! I can’t imagine taking a big tall Throughbred baby with no life experience and putting it under saddle! Disgusting to say the least! It’s happening all over the World. US horses with great pedigrees and racing records sold to and sent to Japan, South Korea and some other God for saken place! These people make me ill
And there certainly is NO love for the horses here! No longer is it the Sport of Kings, but the Sport of the Dead!
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Its the same with any equine discipline – profit & greed removes any thought of compassion or empathy getting in the way. The attitude that humans are above all other species is so very wrong. Just because many humans are unable to understand & communicate with them (well, to be honest some are capable of that) does not make them less than us – just the opposite – it makes them so much MORE.
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