How American horsemeat reaches European tables

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 20

How American horsemeat reaches European tables

From

“The Economist,”

London

American horse thieves have never had it so good. Inflation and Europe’s continuing taste for horsemeat have driven the price of horses on the hoof from 20 cents to 60 cents a pound in five years. Now, with slaughterhouses paying $6OO for the average specimen, few horses are completely safe from rustlers.

Nobody has ever admitted to rearing horses for meat and it is said to be uneconomic to do so. The question is where do the 55,235 tonnes of horsemeat that the United States exports annually come from? It is the equivalent of 120,000 horses, or about 1 per cent of the estimated domesticated horse population in the country. Most of the meat goes to countries that are members .of the E.E.C.; SSOM worth to France, S36M worth to Belgium. How much is used for animal food is not known. Many people sell their horses because they are old, tired and broken down. Riders sell them when they tire of riding or cannot afford the ’ increased cost of feeding and housing their animals. Most experts agree, however, that horses sold- in this way could not account for the 120,000 horses slaughtered each year in the 23 certified equine slaughterhouses. Officials of the Bureau of

Land Management, which has responsibility for huge tracts of federal lands and the wild horses that roam on them, are investigating the mysteriously diminishing number of such horses on those lands. Bureau officials suspect that cowboys are roping the wild horses or running them until they are exhausted. After that,, they say, the cowboys can just pick them up and carry them off, presumably to slaughterhouses. An alternative view among police, branding commissions — which -exist only west of the Mississippi — and horse owners, is that many, if not the majority, . of horses reaching slaughterhouses have been stolen. Capturing wild horses can be a chore, but stealing domesticated horses is easy. Trained to be co-operative, most horses will respond to oats rattling in a pail. Many owners, especially city dwellers who see their horses only at week-ends, may not realise for days that an animal is missing. By the time they find out, their beast may have been slaughtered and on its way to Europe or Japan. Further complicating the picture, but making it easier for horse thieves to get away with their crime, is the fact that those who keep a horse just for fun often refuse to brand their horses because they want to spare their ani-

mals pain. Even branding animals will not discourage all thieves, however. The problem is compounded by equine slaughterhouses, which have long-term contracts to fulfil and are not required to ascertain a horse’s ownership. There are always middlemen or horse-traders waiting in the wings who will, for a fee, provide a thief with a bill of sale as proof of ownership or a carrier and driver to transport the horses to slaughter. The Federal Bureau of Investigation will not intervene unless the horse is worth more than $5OOO and has been taken across State lines.

Many horse owners believe the way to deal with horse theft is to “hang the thieves like we used to." For that reason, pet horse thieves prefer working near metropolitan areas where a pasture may contain horses and where the judge may equate a stolen horse only with a stolen bicycle. Such judges often let horse thieves off with little more than probation. The Colorado branding commissioner would like to see a federal law authorising inspectors to verify the ownership of horses before they are sold or shipped across state lines. But nobody expects the Federal Government to undertake such a task when the budget is being cut.