Results from Freedom of Information Request show severe abuse previously undisclosed: New data provides over nine hundred reasons for the urgent passage of bill banning the slaughter of American horses.
Animals’ Angels, an animal welfare organization based in Maryland, last week received over 900 pages of documents and photographs from the United States Department of Agriculture taken during part of 2005 at the Beltex horse slaughter plant in Texas. Documents received 36 months after making a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, reveal an appalling number of incidences and an equally appalling degree of suffering sustained by horses. Evidence indicates alarming cruelty corresponding directly to horse slaughter.
The large FOIA document contains hundreds of photographs that graphically depict horses with open fractures, legs missing, battered and bloody faces, eyeballs dangling and what appears to be horses left to bleed to death. The document provides unimpeachable evidence for the immediate ban on the slaughter of American horses.
The photographs included in the FOIA document were taken between January 17, 2005 and November 17, 2005 at Beltex, the Belgian owned plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Beltex was forced to close this plant in 2007, after courts upheld Texas law that has banned horse slaughter since 1949. Beltex has since focused on its operations in Fresnillo, Mexico where it continues to slaughter American horses. In addition, Beltex still runs the second largest slaughter horse feedlot in the U.S. Horses from all over the country are tranported to the feedlot in Morton,TX before being sent to the Beltex slaughter plant in Mexico.
The FOIA request was submitted by Animals’ Angels investigator Julie Caramante in November 2005 “I’ve been an equine cruelty investigator for a number of years,” said Caramante, “and I’ve witnessed many horrific incidents of animal cruelty. But nothing could prepare me for the images contained in the FOIA. These pictures shocked me to the core. The pain and terror these horses endured is criminal. This just should not be, no excuses.”
WARNING
Link to report below. Graphic content. Proceed at your own risk. You have been told.
>> LINK TO AA FOIA REPORT FROM BELTEX HORSE SLAUGHTER PLANT
Source: Excerpted Press Release
Tuesday's Horse 