How often do you hear or see an ad that leaves you questioning the claims being made? Anyone who knows me knows that both online and IRL, I am a “super-complainer.” You really have no choice anymore, because “fake news” permeates literally every subject.
A few months ago I visited the Richelieu horse slaughterhouse website as I am wont to do every few months, just to see what nonsense they are purporting. There’s usually always something that can be used to launch an official complaint, and they didn’t disappoint. Claims about horsemeat for pregnant women and for those prone to infection really drew my ire. It’s not very smart to put out information that is so easily discredited. But nobody said horse killers are smart.
It took complaints to Ad Standards, Health Canada, and finally the CFIA (who acted upon the complaint) to do something about it. The CFIA didn’t say exactly what they did or what they counselled Richelieu to remove or stop posting on their website, but I was very pleased that they looked at my materials and saw that the horse killers were using language that amounted to a murky sea of nutritional “advice.”
Our community of anti-slaughter advocates is strong and engaged! If you see questionable or false claims being made about the quality or nutritional value of horsemeat or indeed any animal product, please contact:
We picked up a copy of the EID currently being used at the Ontario Livestock Exchange (OLEX) in Waterloo, Ontario. For a document that supposedly exerts “quality control” over horsemeat, notice that there are no CFIA headers or logos; it is however, “branded” with the name Richelieu and replete with embarrassing spelling errors and typos in both English and French. It is missing a fair bit of information that is present on the sample EID in the CFIA Meat Hygiene Manual for equines as well, including an indicator of the primary use of the horse (recreation/companion animal/ pleasure riding, breeding, ranch/farm work, public work, private industry work, performance/sport/show, racing, rodeo, urine production, food production.) I guess they don’t want high risk animals to be unnecessarily flagged for drugs. Note that on the first page, Richelieu refers to the document itself, not unironically, as “DIE.” It is due to moments like these perhaps, that humorists were born.
As with any other paper version of the EID, the owner is expected to complete the column “withdrawal period.” There is little likelihood
that anyone will follow the obscenely long URL at the bottom of the page, and if they did, they wouldn’t likely understand it since it directs the form user to the French version of the CFIA’s Meat Hygiene Manual – on an English form. It’s completely misleading to provide a link to French guidelines on an English form that is mostly used by english-speaking horse people. So under the circumstances, how would anyone find the withdrawal time for a specific drug even if they knew what it was?
Withdrawal times also vary depending on drug delivery methods – whether oral/IV/IM and whether used in combination with other drugs. The dose itself along with the frequency of use (repeated oral administrations can greatly extend withdrawal times) are two of the most important factors. Compounded drugs (as opposed to generic or branded drugs sold OTC or through veterinarians) can vary widely in potency as well. The amount of body fat, the breed, gender and health of the horse are also factors that affect kinetic decay of drugs. Lastly, the amount of stress that the horse is subject to may also affect withdrawal times. And even though a pharmacological effect on the animal may be over, the drug and its metabolites may still be detectable, and those metabolites may also be prohibited. The CFIA manual doesn’t tell anyone this, nor could they expect the lay horse person to understand any of the factors that also affect withdrawal times and drug tests, so the person completing the form, even if honest, is never provided with the appropriate information.
Of course, the system isn’t designed to encourage former owners to give too much thought to what drugs a horse may have been given on or off-label during the course of its life. It’s to the benefit of the slaughterhouses that short-term owners will be unaware of the existence of a list of prohibited drugs or drugs that must be withdrawn for days or months, since this means fewer declarations of drug administrations, and allows the CFIA to crow about a “98% compliance rate for drugs.” If there were adherence to the Meat Hygiene manual, the majority of horses would be disqualified outright because of Phenylbutazone and other drug usage, including virtually all former race horses. Those that were not disqualified outright would probably need to be held for six months for withdrawal. You couldn’t even immediately slaughter a horse that had recently been wormed.
We saw how corruptible and falsifiable equine passports were during the EU lasagna adulteration scandal two years ago, where meat has for years been extruded through a supply system that could hardly be more opaque, and foreign gangsters and mafia were secretly adulterating the food supply with profit as the main incentive. This is hardly much different than what happens currently In Canada, (minus the organized crime connection) where the EID system provides as much traceability and drug-free conclusiveness as does buying meat off the street from a stranger – because official ID isn’t required in order to complete an EID. Yet the CFIA perversely insists that the paper EID is just as good as the falsifiable passports that allowed the EU horsemeat scandal to happen.
Henry Skjerven, former director of Natural Valley Farms in Saskatchewan, said:
“US and Canada were never geared for raising horses for food consumption. The system as it stood when we were killing horses was in no way, shape or form, safe, in my opinion.
We did not know where those horses were coming from, what might be in them or what they were treated with. I was always in fear – I think that it was very valid – that we were going to send something across there [to the EU] and we were simply going to get our doors locked after we had some kind of issue with the product.”
This has been a most difficult blog post to write. I have watched it many times and cried many tears, especially after adding the Brian Eno soundtrack (from The Lovely Bones) The horses being transported in this video are likely already dead.
You are watching the dash cam of an anti-slaughter advocate, recording the “Roping J” rig with a load of horses heading eastbound on the 401 highway towards Richelieu slaughterhouse in Quebec on November 27, 2013. The video was taken on the 401 eastbound between London and Woodstock Ontario. Jeron/Jeroslav Gold is the owner of Roping J Ranch in Fairhaven, Michigan. He’s a large scale kill buyer who gets many of his horses from traders in Ohio, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Kentucky. Animals Angels reported on the collecting facility in Fairhaven, where the outdoor pen was full of horses and the Roping J truck was backed up to the loading ramp. Gold typically drives up to Canada through the Port Huron border crossing, which is about 1 1/2 hours west from where this rig was filmed.
The original audio track has been removed to preserve the anonymity of the supporter. It has been replaced by a transcript of the driver’s original comments. As the supporter’s car approaches Gold’s rig in the centre lane, you can see clearly that he has attached a horse’s tail above the latch. The trailer has been seen and photographed on previous occasions with this odious “middle finger salute” to animal lovers. It’s a real tail, and he quite often positions it to appear as though a horse is jammed into the hinge or latch. What’s new this time is that there appears to be an actual horse tail jammed in the door at the bottom right side above the door hinge. It is visible from multiple angles in the video. Also notice from the video that the driver of the rig appears to have noticed that his information is being taken, as he encroaches into the driving lane where our videographer is driving. The person who mocks horse lovers by flying a horse tail “flag” and who tries to squeeze the videographer in their own lane is the type of person that is going to be signing off on documents stating the horses are drug free, while putting adulterated meat into the food chain. This is the type of person that we allow control and input into the food chain, someone who is perhaps close to the furthest end of the spectrum of immorality.
Notice that the video was shot late in the afternoon – we can see this via the long shadows of the vehicles travelling eastbound – it is perhaps after 4 pm. From somewhere between London and Woodstock Ontario, it’s just under 9 hours until the driver reaches Massueville QC (excluding stops) and about 8 hours to St. Andre-Avellin, so the horses would arrive very late the same day or possibly the next day. The earliest he could possibly arrive would be 11 pm if he went to St. Andre-Avellin (Les viands de la petite nations slaughterhouse) and even later if he went to Massueville as expected (Richelieu slaughterhouse). What time did he expect to get there?
There wouldn’t be an inspector at the plant at this time – they only work regular hours. And they can no longer unload the trailers without inspectors present, so the horses will have had to spend the night on the trailer until the next morning.
Transcript:
:40 – US DOT 289445
:50 – Got the whole Roping J Ranch Michigan US DOT Number 289445 KYU 243688
Ontario 158517965
Quebec 5841037
1:21 – Michigan Trailer License B675540
2:20 – Truck begins to encroach into driving lane – driver aware that his information is being taken and is squeezing the driver in their own lane?
2:25 – Truck moves back into its own lane and weaves slightly after doing so
A very comprehensively written article by 13 Investigates followed slaughter bound horses journey from the Shipshewana auction in Indiana, near the Michigan border, where Gold purchased almost all the horses offered for sale. He was also quoted in A Toronto Life article about the horsemeat trade in Canada, arguing: “There is an end life for everything. I’d like to know what people want to do with all these horses that nobody wants. I’d like somebody to answer that. [Every day] I see…horses mistreated, skinny, didn’t have proper care and there’s nobody to take care of them. Who’s going to take care of them?”
“I killed every one of those f—ing horses, over 120 of them, if they only knew. I only have five left and the ones that you have. Every one of them is dead. I don’t even know their names and there wasn’t a goddamn thing they could do about it…” ~ Kelsey Lefever
Circle of Death – This is where some of Gold’s “product” ends up – at La Palette in Toronto, where horse advocates have held dozens of protests. Here is co-owner Shamez Amlani (on the left) arguing with protester.
This is not how you do end-of-life. Can’t you give horses “mistreated, skinny” horses a humane death without eating them? And I bet there are no skinny horses on Gold’s trailer. The USDA reports 92% of horses going to slaughter are in good condition and able to live healthy and productive lives. The existence of horse slaughter actually hinders rescue efforts, as rescuers are routinely outbid at auctions by people like Jeron Gold, seeking healthy animals that bring the best price per pound.
Gold’s driving is perhaps typical for kill buyers – in the video One Horse’s Last Steps, which has over 50,000 views, you can plainly see the driver run over a curb and swerve into the curb lane a number of time with a load of horses. And yet another tail can be seen caught in the door.
We will fight you until our dying breath is taken, just like Mary Nash did. Please support these currently active programs:
Canadian Horse Defence Coalition – Latest Postcard Campaign (click to follow link)
Animals’ Angels – Light the Sky – December 7th (click to follow link)
Written by: Heather Clemenceau
heatherclemenceau 