Can slaughterhouses create a good experience for livestock?

Disclosure: This blog has been put together for a school project.

Have you ever thought about how a prey animal sees the world? They are hypersensitive to minute details around them, many of which humans are completely oblivious to. In order to survive in the wild, these animals had to be sensitive to details and changes in their environment. It remains pure instinct for them to be afraid.

The first minute of the video below shows and explains the main elements of how a prey animal's mind works. Although this woman (Grandin) uses a herd of cows to perform her demonstration, horses are flight animals as well, and think and act very much the same as cows do in similar instances.


Dr. Temple Grandin is well known for her connection with prey animals, particularly with cows. She believes her connection comes from her ability to see their point of view, due to her severe case of autism that she was diagnosed with when she was a small child. Her condition causes her to have "sensory sensitivities," which enables her to relate to how a flight animal thinks and processes the world. She describes prey animals as "curiously afraid," an accurate description of how the cattle react to her.


Grandin explains in this video that even small things, such as a mispositioned light or flagging tape on a rail, can create panic in an animal. In her developments of cattle chutes and livestock loading systems, she expresses how important proper curves and non-slip flooring is to a good system. More information on her designs can be found at her website, http://www.grandin.com.

After absorbing all of this information, it leaves me thinking - unless regulations are put on horse breeding facilities, overpopulation of horses will always exist in North America. That raises my first point: could regulations be put on breeding operations to avoid the issue? Breeding operations exist where foals are mass produced, only to be sold for "a dime a dozen" (Quarter Horses in particular). If this overbreeding stopped happening, would horse slaughter be eliminated, or at least minimized, in North America? In turn, would that eliminate the need for horse rescue?

If horse slaughter is a necessary evil, however, what if Dr. Grandin's systems and management theories were implemented in horse slaughterhouses? I disagree with horse slaughter simply because they are not raised for those intentions, and North Americans do not even make up the primary market for horsemeat (most of it is exported overseas). But the treatment of these animals is the real kicker. If proper care was taken to ensure these animals are not frightened during the process, would it make it better?

Horse Rescue: All of us benefit

Disclosure: This blog has been put together for a school project.

This photo is not of a rescue horse; it is of a horse that is in her element. This is what horses should look like, and what environment they have the right to exist in. They are beautiful and noble creatures, and deserve to live as such.

Unfortunately, many horses don't get this experience.

Horse rescue has an impact that reaches far and wide to many areas in society, even areas that affect people outside of the horse world. I believe that I, as a horse person, have a responsibility to inform those who don't know about horse rescue so an awareness is built. This awareness will lead to changes that everyone can make in their everyday lives to contribute to the fight against horse slaughter, PMU farming and neglect and abuse of these graceful creatures.

As you may or may not already know, PMU farming (as described at www.premarin.org) includes a process of harvesting hormones from mare's urine for use in human medicines (especially for medicines that reduce effects of menopause in women). The mares that are these PMU farms are often confined for months on end (during the collection phase), and their foals are often sent for slaughter.

Mares being forced to stand during the "collection phase."

Fighting horse slaughter is also important because much of the time, horsemeat contains drugs that are harmful to humans if consumed. Because most horses are not raised for the intent of slaughtering, these drugs become present through veterinary treatments on the animal (a common one is an anti-inflammatory called butazone). Any horse that has been treated with butazone at any point in their lifetime is not supposed to be slaughtered for the purpose of human consumption, but apparently much of the time this is overlooked by the slaughterhouses.

The processes behind horse slaughter is also an extremely terrifying experience for a horse. It is not a way that many of us would like to go out, so why is it done to them?

So, you say, what can you do to help? Well, there are a couple of different ways.

There just so happens to be a small farm in Maple Ridge, BC, called J & M Acres Rescue (http://www.jmacresrescue.com/). This is one of many rescue operations that brings in horses from auctionmarts, racetracks, and other places. Of course, these operations always need funding; you can send donations to many of them (to J & M you can send it by PayPal or by cheque). You can view a list of qualified rescue operations at http://www.defendhorsescanada.org/rescue-centres.html.

If you have the facilities and the drive to deliver the TLC these horses need, you can also adopt. The adoption fees are usually relatively low to the right owner/home. J & M offers a two-week trial period, in which time they can decide whether the fit is right for both the new owner and the horse. New owners must remember that some of these horses have had an incredibly tough go at it previously, so many of them need extra special attention and care (like this little pony http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/09/29/the-pony-rescue-express.aspx). There have been many successful adoptions, however, where the horses have turned right around and become trusting and loving companions.

To wrap up, I'd like to ask - why do you think horse rescue is important / not important? Do you think horse slaughter, and in turn horse rescue, would be minimized if breeding operations downsized their breeding? What about PMU farms? How can people help to minimize the need for horse rescue at all?

Really, the whole point of this post is to provide some background information on what horse rescue is all about. Next posts will be different, I promise.