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One of America’s leading animal welfare groups is to launch a major campaign next year aimed at outlawing the slaughter of horses in the UK to be exported for human consumption.

An investigation by the London Observer newspaper revealed that as many as 7,000 horses a year are shot in two UK abattoirs. It was disclosed how their throats are slit, their bodies hung upside down and skinned before they are butchered to be sold across the Channel as gourmet meat. Many are thoroughbreds that have finished racing or never made the grade. The disclosure shocked many people in the animal world.
Now the US-based International Fund for Horses aims to make such killings illegal. It has been one of the major campaigners behind the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act in America, which has wide support across both the Republican and Democrat parties and is close to becoming law.
Its celebrity supporters include Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Bo Derek, Whoopi Goldberg, Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Daryl Hannah and Paul McCartney.
The fund president, Vivian Farrell, said: “When we started in the US many people simply didn’t believe it was going on. The same is the case in the UK. Now thanks to articles like those in The Observer it cannot be ignored....Whatever is successful in America we will attempt to use as a template for our efforts to get it banned in Britain.”
Supporting its US campaign, Paul McCartney said: “In this new century I think it is horrific and slightly strange to realise that horses, traditionally man’s friend, are still being transported and slaughtered for human consumption.”
Republican Representative John Sweeney, who sponsored the Act in the US, said: “It’s one of the most inhumane, brutal and shady practices going on in the United States today.” More than 90,000 horses are slaughtered each year in the US.
While the racing industry has always tried to play down what happens to the 4,000 horses that retire each year from the sport, The Observer proved that many ended up on dinner plates. Even the bodies that regulate the industry have been forced to admit that over the last five years thousands of racehorses have been slaughtered in the UK for food.
Yet a move to outlaw the slaughter of horses for meat in Britain could face opposition. In the US, the ban was opposed by the American Veterinary Medical Association, which feared rescue shelters would be swamped with hundreds of thousands of unwanted animals, while others would be sold to unregulated slaughterhouses overseas and brutalised.
Animal charities would like the multi-billion-pound racing industry to spend far more on providing places for retired horses. It spends only £250,000 ($467,680) a year on retraining 90 animals. Although some thoroughbreds are retrained for polo, hunting or other activities, many are unsuitable for general riding.
The British Horseracing Board, which governs the industry, said there was no evidence that a ban was necessary.