Doping at US tracks affects Europe’s taste for horse meat

Banned drugs toxic to humans are being found in horse meat from U.S. racehorses sent to Canada and Mexico for slaughter.

Cross-posted from The New York Times

WRITTEN BY JOE DRAPE

PARIS — For decades, American horses, many of them retired or damaged racehorses, have been shipped to Canada and Mexico, where it is legal to slaughter horses, and then processed and sold for consumption in Europe and beyond.

Lately, however, European food safety officials have notified Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses of a growing concern: The meat of American racehorses may be too toxic to eat safely because the horses have been injected repeatedly with drugs.

Despite the fact that racehorses make up only a fraction of the trade in horse meat, the European officials have indicated that they may nonetheless require lifetime medication records for slaughter-bound horses from Canada and Mexico, and perhaps require them to be held on feedlots or some other holding area for six months before they are slaughtered.

In October, Stephan Giguere, the general manager of a major slaughterhouse in Quebec, said he turned away truckloads of horses coming from the United States because his clients were worried about potential drug issues. Mr. Giguere said he told his buyers to stay away from horses coming from American racetracks.

“Racehorses are walking pharmacies,” said Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a veterinarian on the faculty of Tufts University and a co-author of a 2010 article that sought to raise concerns about the health risks posed by American racehorses. He said it was reckless to want any of the drugs routinely administered to horses “in your food chain.”

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TUESDAY’S HORSE SAYS

This is not news to anti horse slaughter advocates of course. But we are extremely grateful for Mr. Drape’s continued exposure of the drug problems facing U.S. racehorses, which now includes the problem of being slaughtered for human consumption full of banned pharmaceuticals across American borders.

However, what about Canadian racehorses?

Canadian racehorses, as we have seen, are routinely slaughtered for human consumption and also administered the anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone (bute) and widely abused medication for breathing problems clenbuterol (clen) just like their U.S. cousins.

Slaughter plants in Canada and Mexico should be rejecting all racehorses, not just the ones from the United States.

The other depressing question: What happened to the truckloads of U.S. racehorses turned away from slaughterhouses in Canada, if indeed they were.

U.S. slaughter horses caught in bureaucratic limbo

Horse slaughter workers have put down their killing tools for the moment as U.S. horses are turned away in Canada. Google image.

Reportedly for the moment Canadian horse slaughter plants are not accepting U.S. horses for slaughter for human consumption, leaving these horses in bureaucratic limbo while we await announcements from the European Commission (EC), Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Some buyers for horse slaughter plants initially intended to return the horses to the livestock auction houses where they got them from, but they say they do not want them. Kill buyers are therefore scrambling to unload as many horses as they can by re-directing them to Mexico for slaughter. Time is not on their side and they know it. Any action the EC takes in relation to the slaughter of U.S. horses for human consumption in Canada will affect Mexico too.

Several State officials are concerned about slaughter horses awaiting death in feedlots and possible inhumane treatment such as overcrowding, injuries, inadequate food and water, and even mass abandonment. How will they take care of them? What will they do with them?

In the meantime, this latest chapter in the Canadian horse slaughter story is a black eye to the CFIA. The agency has failed to manage the Equine Identification Program (EID) it conceived to comply successfully with the EC mandate that meat from horses receiving banned medications never enters the human food chain in its member countries.

The United States federal government has failed miserably in its duty Congress after Congress for over a decade for not completely outlawing the slaughter of American horses for human consumption, knowing full well that American horses are not traditional food animals and therefore not regulated for this purpose.

Equally and dismally irresponsible, State legislators, Governors, elected officials and lobbyists payrolled by special interests, individually and collectively, serving suspicious and highly questionable agendas, are working to return horse slaughter to U.S. soil with this very same knowledge clearly at hand.

If the EC does what the U.S. has so blithely refused or failed to do, and the slaughter of U.S. horses in Canada and Mexico is severely curtailed or possibly ended — even in the short term — what will horse breeders and industry users in the U.S. do with the thousands of horses they no longer have use for.

Let us not leave Canadian horses out of the slaughter equation. They are not traditional food animals either and receive the same types of banned pharmaceuticals as their American cousins.

While U.S. horses are being turned away for slaughter for human consumption in Canada, what about the thousands of, for example, the country’s own racehorses that they routinely slaughter?

With or without an EID document, forged or otherwise, we know that racehorses in Canada receive regular doses of phenylbutazone (bute) and clenbuterol (clen) which according to labeling warnings state unequivocally that these drugs are not intended for use in animals entering the human food chain. These two medications are explicitly banned by the EC. In particular traces of bute are repeatedly testing positive in horse meat exported from Canada.

No horse should be slaughtered for human consumption in Canada, Mexico or the United States no matter where in N. America they originate or the destination of their meat.

Inquiry faults racing officials in horse fatalities at Aqueduct

by JOE DRAPE and WALTER BOGDANICH

Cross-posted from the New York Times

SELECTED EXCERPT

Only veterinarians can legally prescribe medicine for horses, yet veterinarians often let trainers, who are paid to win races, make medical decisions, including which drugs to use. These veterinarians also have a powerful financial incentive to prescribe drugs. They are both doctor and drugstore, so the more drugs they prescribe, the more money they make. Selling and administering drugs accounts for most of their income.

INTRODUCTION

Horses at Starting Gate. Google Image.

More than half of the 21 racehorses who had fatal breakdowns at Aqueduct Racetrack earlier this year might have been saved had racing authorities more closely monitored their health and the liberal use of prescription drugs to keep them racing, according to an investigation ordered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.

The sudden rise of horse fatalities in the early part of the year at Aqueduct coincided with the opening of the Resorts World casino there, which greatly expanded the size of the purses.

Both racing officials and regulatory veterinarians, who were supposed to protect the horses, often ignored signs that they were ailing and allowed them to race for purses inflated with money from the track’s adjacent gambling casino, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation’s report.

The investigation found that veterinarians and officials of the New York Racing Association often cared more about filling races that generate revenue for trainers, owners and the racetracks than about whether horses were fit to compete.

Mr. Cuomo, who took control of racing in the state this summer, is expected to announce a series of overhauls on Friday in Albany that will restrict the use of potent anti-inflammatory drugs known as corticosteroids, as well as clenbuterol, a widely abused bronchodilator that can build muscle if used improperly.

“At the New York Racing Association, concern for the health of the horses finished a distant second to economics,” Howard B. Glaser, Mr. Cuomo’s director of state operations, said in an interview. “Our reforms, which will go in effect immediately, will put horses’ health and rider safety first.”

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We’ll see about that. Convince me Mr. Glaser. — Editor.