USDA, Tennessee Walking Horse industry escalate fight over horse soring

There should be no “get out of jail card” for anyone soring a horse. Soring is practice of inflicting intentional pain to the feet or legs of horses by the application of caustic chemicals which burn their skin, or by inserting foreign objects to the sensitive areas of their hooves. In reaction to the pain, horses lift their front legs high off the ground, producing the exaggerated “Big Lick” gait rewarded in the show ring.

Before I introduce the latest report by Heidi Hall (jump to it now) for The Tennessean, I feel for the teenager who sobbed when her horse was ousted from the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration for scarring, a telltale sign of soring.

Who knows how old the scarring is or when the incident(s) occurred. However, this type of no nonsense, no questions asked enforcement against horse soring is fitting and well past overdue.

If any crying is done, it should be for the hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of horses who have lived tortured lives, going through who knows what extremes of physical and mental suffering, all to satisfy the egos and line the pockets of evil thinking owners and trainers.

I am referring to an article filed just a short time ago by HEIDI HALL for The Tennessean (same headline as this post).

SHELBYVILLE, TENN. — Mikayla Dent doubled over in sobs, her tears making little splashes in the dust while her parents pleaded with inspectors to take another look at the family’s only Tennessee Walking Horse.

Call Me Amazing Grace competed all season with no problem, they said. It had cost them $5,000 to be at the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, they said, money that’d be thrown away if they were stupid enough to abuse their daughter’s pet.

But on Thursday night, after Amazing Grace sailed through one local inspection and one federal inspection, another federal inspector stepped in and issued a scarring citation — meaning he found evidence of past soring on one of the horse’s legs. Just like that, Amazing Grace and 16-year-old Mikayla were out of the walking horse industry’s biggest annual event. Her father, Michael Dent, led them away.

There’s lots more. Finish reading here >>

We cannot thank Heidi Hall enough for keeping this in the headlines of a national newspaper (online or otherwise).

WHAT IS SORING?

Soring is practice of inflicting intentional pain to the feet or legs of horses by the application of caustic chemicals which burn their skin, or by inserting foreign objects to the sensitive areas of their hooves. In reaction to the pain, horses lift their front legs high off the ground, producing the exaggerated “Big Lick” gait rewarded in the show ring.

RELATED READING

Also from The Tennessean, please see:

– Tennessee Walking Horse Industry and Soring Timeline
http://www.tennessean.com/interactive/article/99999999/INTERACTIVES/120531020/Tennessee-Walking-Horse-Industry-Soring-Timeline

– Tennessee Walking Horse Industry | Interactive Multi-Media Report
http://www.tennessean.com/section/projects36

Both of these resources are brilliant.

Honest horse groups would cooperate when it comes to soring

A horse is inspected for soring. The USDA is undermanned and underfunded, and currently must rely on certain horse groups to conduct inspections necessary to enforce the Horse Protection Act. HSUS image.

Finding cooperation among the USDA and the groups certified by the agency to conduct inspections to enforce the Horse Protection Act and eliminate the soring of Tennessee Walking horses can be a big challenge.

Currently the USDA is forced to use outside inspectors because they are undermanned and underfunded.

In an OpEd for The Tennessean, the writer states:

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has wisely taken the first step toward decertification of three organizations that are supposed to regulate the walking horse industry. It should not let any outlandish claims from the foot-dragging groups distract it from this path.

“SHOW Inc. is one of the three, out of 12 horse industry groups, who did not submit amended rule books to federal officials by a July 9 deadline. The rule changes focus on implementing tough mandatory penalties for soring and other abuse of show horses.

SHOW responds in a recently released statement:

“SHOW … has enforced stricter penalties than even the federal government, but this rule was written in a way that allows soring trainers to continue showing their horses, something to which we are totally opposed,” the statement said, quoting SHOW’s Dr. Stephen Mullins.

The OpEd, addressing this, responds:

“There’s a term for this sort of logic: gaslighting. The USDA accuses you of being lax on soring? Just turn the tables; accuse the USDA of being lax … maybe it will stick.”

Concluding with:

In a few weeks, the biggest event of the year, the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, starts in Shelbyville. SHOW will be there, but so will federal inspectors. If, as SHOW suggested this week, the success of the Celebration will be affected, it will not be because of federal intervention, but because industry groups have had most of a year to do something about horse abuse, and failed miserably.

There’s more to this story, including a lawsuit filed by SHOW against the USDA alleging “the minimum penalty requirement is unconstitutional”.

Interesting in comments is a question I think anyone seeing the undercover footage by the HSUS of Jackie McConnell abusing and beating horses the Tennessee Walkers he trains. Why did it take the corporatized mega animal rights’ group a year to release it?

” . . . the people I have talked to said they would have called the authorities right then instead of waiting a year. After all didn’t Keith [Dane] say what he did was about the horses and they were being tortured every day and then knowing he had video that could stop it he waited a year before he released it.

– OpEd Source: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120803/OPINION01/308030054/Honest-horse-groups-would-cooperate

– Comment Source: http://www.tennessean.com/comments/article/20120803/OPINION01/308030054/Honest-horse-groups-would-cooperate

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Chemical soring is the process of putting acidic products and irritating chemicals on a horse’s legs causing pain so the horse lifts his or her legs in an exaggerated fashion commonly called the “Big Lick”.

Mechanical soring includes the use of pressure shoeing causing pain to the bottom of the horse’s feet, again so the horse will lift his or her legs higher.

The practice of soring is most commonly found among gaited horses such as the Tennessee Walking Horse.

Read more >>

Recent test shows Canada sending toxic horse meat to Europeans but on it goes

It is irresponsible for Canada to export horse meat for human consumption to Europe containing banned carcinogenic drug residues. It is equally irresponsible for the EU to continue accepting it and should admit their policies have failed and declare an outright ban on horse meat from the US, Canada and Mexico.

Updated. Horse advocates have long warned that toxic horse meat from slaughtered American and Canadian horses is ending up on the dinner tables of Europe.

In February 2010 a peer reviewed scientific study entitled “Bute and Slaughter Horses Toxicology Study” (pdf) branded USDA studies asserting U.S. and Canadian horse meat as chemically harmless as bogus.

Following extensive lobbying started by us, with European food safety activists later joining in, the EU issued sanctions requiring the quarantine of horses intended for the human food chain who had been administered a laundry list of prohibited substances. The most common among those drugs are phenylbutazone (bute) and clenbuterol.

However, an agreement was struck between the EU and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that effective July 2010 documentation — the Equine Identification Document (EID) — containing the medical history of a slaughter horse intended for human consumption is all that would be required.

That policy is clearly failing which is clearly demonstrated in the findings described below.

The European Commission’s RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) reports in July 2012 that the

“unauthorised substances clenbuterol (0.0023 mg/kg – ppm) and phenylbutazone (0.0013; 0.0015; 0.0010 mg/kg – ppm) in chilled deboned horse meat and frozen deboned horse meat from Canada”

were found during routine testing. Source: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/rasff-window/portal/index.cfm?event=notificationDetail&NOTIF_REFERENCE=2012.1078.

Last year there was this:

“In May of 2011 a report was released by the European Commission Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) regarding inspections of EU regulated plants in Mexico slaughtering horses for human consumption during the latter part of 2010.

“. . . . a number of serious infractions and actions taken were cited. Some of these violations that failed to meet EU regulations included; hygiene and water quality provided for the horses, non-traceable carcasses some of which were in contact with EU eligible horse meat, presence of EU prohibited drug residues, falsified sworn statements regarding veterinary medical treatment histories including cases of positive results for EU prohibited drug residues.”

Source: http://www.horsefund.org/horse-slaughter-comes-to-town-part-3.php

Trailered Slaughter Horse. Google image.

So, the EU have stiffened requirements a bit. Or have they really?

Effective July 2013, the EU are demanding that all horses slaughtered for human consumption at EU-certified plants in countries that export horse meat to Europe must have a veterinary record listing all medications they have been given during their lifetime.

This new regulation if enforceable would render nearly all American horses ineligible for foreign slaughter.

However, if the EID system currently in play in Canada can be forged, absent and not even asked for at the slaughterhouse door, then what makes this procedure any different or more effective?

Have these officials ever seen how slaughter horses are transported in, and by whom? The drivers employed are not always stellar characters, and it is highly doubtful they are going to know what paperwork goes with what horse.

It is very similar to USDA stickers that fall off during the dangerous journeys these horses made in deplorable conditions in the U.S. We have been told they just stick them back on to a horse who does not have one. They also take them off dead horses and put them on live horses who have lost their stickers. You see just how unreliable it all is.

A horse slaughter plant worker in Canada told Tuesday’s Horse a few weeks ago that it is nearly impossible to keep accurate records of how many horses show up, their gender or what breed they are, never mind what drugs they have been given in their lifetime.

“Nobody cares”, he told us. “The only ones you get much of a look at are the downers because you have to drag them in. The other horses, they get them in there and kill them so fast. The plant manager usually figures it out by how many pounds of horse meat get produced and so then, how many horses would that take. Then he weighs that up against how many horses they have bought off the middlemen and makes the numbers work out.”

So under the new EU requirement, veterinary records for each of them will be demanded, right? He just laughed.

“Nobody’s going to look too hard, I guarantee. If you got it fine I guess, but no matter. Because there’s horses to be killed and money to be made. Got to protect the bottom line.”

EU Commission Building, Brussels, Belgium. Google Image.

We tried to get a Commissioner to go on record, but were only able to get a blind quote. In it she stated to a colleague of ours in the UK that there would be regular, annual unannounced inspections at all EU-regulated plants where horses were slaughtered for export to EU countries, and a single infraction would mean a complete shut down.

The Commissioner added that if the U.S. were to open any horse slaughter plants they would have to be EU regulated before they would accept horse meat exports to member countries.

In the meantime, legislation banning the slaughter of horses for human consumption sits idle in both the Congress of the United States and the Parliament of Canada.

Despite best efforts, it seems pretty obvious that the United States and Canada are not going to take the right and ethical step and ban horse slaughter any time soon, so why doesn’t the European Commission say enough, and declare an outright ban on the import of horse meat from the United States, Canada and Mexico?

Because, as the slaughter man said, there’s horses to be killed and money to be made. Got to protect the bottom line.

Horse meat is ugly.