OldDog/NewTricks
Well-known member
An observation regarding an item I forwarded some time ago
Someone else also wondered why some of this meat, from non-pets/companion animals, could not be sent to hungry people in many parts of the world
From:
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 2:43 PM
To: Reynnells, Richard
Subject: Fwd: Horse processing ban creating black market on meat (AP)
Says 200 lbs of human-quality meat removed from the horse carcass.
How much does the average horse weigh? That would give a recovery ratio per carcass for human food consumption.
100,000 horses x 200 pounds of meat per carcass is 20 million pounds of meat! Which could feed how many annually?
That is equal to the production of what segment of the meat industry? Some stats at http://www.meatami.com/ht/display/ShowPage/id/47465/pid/47465 -- says total production if 97 billion pounds.
20 million pounds is very respectable.
The balance of the horse is also used, I assume, for pet food, etc.
Associated Press
Horse slaughters have Miami-area owners on edge
By SARAH LARIMER (AP)
July 31, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMMg2KGp0r4Wby-rFg9-RXNGWtwgD99PC1000
MIAMI — Someone is killing the horses of Miami-Dade County.
Since January, police say at least 17 horses have been butchered,
their carcasses left on roadsides or in stalls or rural pastures.
Police tiptoe around questions about who is doing the killing and why,
but animal rights advocates believe the meat is being sold on the
black market to people from other countries where horse is a delicacy.
"It's a real ugly problem we're trying to take hold of and eliminate,"
said Richard Couto, an investigator with the South Florida Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which has recently looked into
six horse killings. "Extremely, extremely difficult to find the people
that are doing the slaughtering."
Ivonne Rodriguez had never heard the horror stories, never seen the
pictures, until her horse, Geronimo, disappeared from his pasture one
February morning. She missed work to post fliers and canvass her
neighborhood, asking others if they had seen the good-natured pinto
who liked apples and was friendly around children.
A few days later, she got a call from her father. The horse's remains
had been discovered under a palm tree, partially hidden by fronds. It
had been decapitated and butchered, apparently by thieves who took its
meat.
"Not only is it disturbing, it's hurtful," Rodriguez said. "It's a pet
for God's sake. It's not been raised to suffer a death like that."
The killings have continued, the latest over the weekend. On Monday,
Couto stood over a horse carcass with about 200 pounds of meat
removed. Its owner found it butchered over the weekend, its
cappuccino-colored foal alive and still nuzzled against its body.
The horse's remains were burned, but a nauseating stench still
lingered around the body, which lay just a few feet from its old home.
Miami-Dade Police Capt. Scott Andress, whose agency is among those
investigating the horse slaughters, said the cases are tough to solve
because they usually happen in rural areas where there are no
eyewitnesses. He said his officers are working to confirm whether the
horse meat is being sold to consumers.
"We had received anecdotal evidence in the past that there might be
some sort of black market activity," said Andress, commander of
department's Agricultural Patrol Section.
"We started hearing more about it after Jan. 11, which was the first
case we got this year."
Couto says the black market for horse meat is both active and profitable.
"Miami-Dade and South Florida is a melting pot," Couto said. "We have
a lot of people, we have a lot of international people, from Asia,
Europe, South, Central America and the islands. A lot of these
countries, horse meat for human consumption is legal. These people
grow up eating this meat."
Investigators have discovered animals with slit throats and slashed
tendons. Some have been stabbed to the heart, and some might have been
butchered alive. The meat is often harvested in unsanitary conditions
— on the sides of roads, in dirty barns, with tools that might not be
clean — but Couto says some people are still willing to pay $7 to $20
a pound.
Horse thefts aren't unique to Miami-Dade County, but in other parts of
the country, the horses are sometimes not seen again and it's tough to
prove what happened to them, said Laura Bevan, director of The Humane
Society of the United States' Eastern Regional Office. Not so here,
where carcasses have turned up close to where horses were taken.
Until a few years ago, as many as 100,000 horses were killed annually
in the United States for meat for foreign markets. In Florida, it is
legal for horse owners to kill and eat their own horses on their own
land, but horses cannot be slaughtered and sold to others for human
consumption.
A 2007 federal court ruling closed the nation's last horse-processing
plant, though some groups are currently pushing to renew the slaughter
of horses in the U.S. Horses that are sold for meat are now sent to
processing plants in Mexico and Canada.
In Miami-Dade, horse owners are still looking for answers. Two years
have passed since Allen Owens' blue-eyed horse, Comanche, was found
slaughtered in his stall. Owens' wife discovered the grisly scene in
August 2007, when she went to feed the animal grain and hay at
daybreak.
"As long as it's been since it happened, it just drags out really
powerful emotions," he said. "I'm not a violent person, but you
wouldn't believe what goes through your mind."
Owens believes thieves used a wheelbarrow to cart meat from the
stable, out a wooden gate, past a red horse trailer, across another
patch of land, and through a chain link fence before the reached a
wooded area and a nearby roadway. Owens and his wife were left with
Comanche's head and bones, which are now buried under a Florida Holly,
a few feet from a round horse pen Owens fashioned out himself out of
electric poles.
"It just was the most gruesome thing I had ever seen in my life,"
Owens said. "It's a memory that never goes away. I've learned to live
with it, but it never goes away."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Someone else also wondered why some of this meat, from non-pets/companion animals, could not be sent to hungry people in many parts of the world
From:
Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 2:43 PM
To: Reynnells, Richard
Subject: Fwd: Horse processing ban creating black market on meat (AP)
Says 200 lbs of human-quality meat removed from the horse carcass.
How much does the average horse weigh? That would give a recovery ratio per carcass for human food consumption.
100,000 horses x 200 pounds of meat per carcass is 20 million pounds of meat! Which could feed how many annually?
That is equal to the production of what segment of the meat industry? Some stats at http://www.meatami.com/ht/display/ShowPage/id/47465/pid/47465 -- says total production if 97 billion pounds.
20 million pounds is very respectable.
The balance of the horse is also used, I assume, for pet food, etc.
Associated Press
Horse slaughters have Miami-area owners on edge
By SARAH LARIMER (AP)
July 31, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMMg2KGp0r4Wby-rFg9-RXNGWtwgD99PC1000
MIAMI — Someone is killing the horses of Miami-Dade County.
Since January, police say at least 17 horses have been butchered,
their carcasses left on roadsides or in stalls or rural pastures.
Police tiptoe around questions about who is doing the killing and why,
but animal rights advocates believe the meat is being sold on the
black market to people from other countries where horse is a delicacy.
"It's a real ugly problem we're trying to take hold of and eliminate,"
said Richard Couto, an investigator with the South Florida Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which has recently looked into
six horse killings. "Extremely, extremely difficult to find the people
that are doing the slaughtering."
Ivonne Rodriguez had never heard the horror stories, never seen the
pictures, until her horse, Geronimo, disappeared from his pasture one
February morning. She missed work to post fliers and canvass her
neighborhood, asking others if they had seen the good-natured pinto
who liked apples and was friendly around children.
A few days later, she got a call from her father. The horse's remains
had been discovered under a palm tree, partially hidden by fronds. It
had been decapitated and butchered, apparently by thieves who took its
meat.
"Not only is it disturbing, it's hurtful," Rodriguez said. "It's a pet
for God's sake. It's not been raised to suffer a death like that."
The killings have continued, the latest over the weekend. On Monday,
Couto stood over a horse carcass with about 200 pounds of meat
removed. Its owner found it butchered over the weekend, its
cappuccino-colored foal alive and still nuzzled against its body.
The horse's remains were burned, but a nauseating stench still
lingered around the body, which lay just a few feet from its old home.
Miami-Dade Police Capt. Scott Andress, whose agency is among those
investigating the horse slaughters, said the cases are tough to solve
because they usually happen in rural areas where there are no
eyewitnesses. He said his officers are working to confirm whether the
horse meat is being sold to consumers.
"We had received anecdotal evidence in the past that there might be
some sort of black market activity," said Andress, commander of
department's Agricultural Patrol Section.
"We started hearing more about it after Jan. 11, which was the first
case we got this year."
Couto says the black market for horse meat is both active and profitable.
"Miami-Dade and South Florida is a melting pot," Couto said. "We have
a lot of people, we have a lot of international people, from Asia,
Europe, South, Central America and the islands. A lot of these
countries, horse meat for human consumption is legal. These people
grow up eating this meat."
Investigators have discovered animals with slit throats and slashed
tendons. Some have been stabbed to the heart, and some might have been
butchered alive. The meat is often harvested in unsanitary conditions
— on the sides of roads, in dirty barns, with tools that might not be
clean — but Couto says some people are still willing to pay $7 to $20
a pound.
Horse thefts aren't unique to Miami-Dade County, but in other parts of
the country, the horses are sometimes not seen again and it's tough to
prove what happened to them, said Laura Bevan, director of The Humane
Society of the United States' Eastern Regional Office. Not so here,
where carcasses have turned up close to where horses were taken.
Until a few years ago, as many as 100,000 horses were killed annually
in the United States for meat for foreign markets. In Florida, it is
legal for horse owners to kill and eat their own horses on their own
land, but horses cannot be slaughtered and sold to others for human
consumption.
A 2007 federal court ruling closed the nation's last horse-processing
plant, though some groups are currently pushing to renew the slaughter
of horses in the U.S. Horses that are sold for meat are now sent to
processing plants in Mexico and Canada.
In Miami-Dade, horse owners are still looking for answers. Two years
have passed since Allen Owens' blue-eyed horse, Comanche, was found
slaughtered in his stall. Owens' wife discovered the grisly scene in
August 2007, when she went to feed the animal grain and hay at
daybreak.
"As long as it's been since it happened, it just drags out really
powerful emotions," he said. "I'm not a violent person, but you
wouldn't believe what goes through your mind."
Owens believes thieves used a wheelbarrow to cart meat from the
stable, out a wooden gate, past a red horse trailer, across another
patch of land, and through a chain link fence before the reached a
wooded area and a nearby roadway. Owens and his wife were left with
Comanche's head and bones, which are now buried under a Florida Holly,
a few feet from a round horse pen Owens fashioned out himself out of
electric poles.
"It just was the most gruesome thing I had ever seen in my life,"
Owens said. "It's a memory that never goes away. I've learned to live
with it, but it never goes away."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
