Kudos to Alex Brown for making the leap from the New York Times blog, The Rail, to the sports pages of the daily! His article on horse auctions, was picked up on May 22 and ran in the sports section of the paper.
It is great visibility for Alex, of course, but it is also great publicity for the cause near and dear to his heart: horse slaughter. In the piece, Brown documents his weekly visits to a livestock auction about an hour west of Woodbine race course in Ontario, where he is currently based.
As he learned, kill buyers seek healthy-looking horses for their operations, paying anywhere from 15 to 49 cents a pound for their meat. How incredibly gruesome to pay a premium for healthy horses destined for someone's dinner table in Europe or elsewhere. It is gut-wrenching to calculate the value of a healthy thoroughbred based on the weight of his carcass.
What makes this practice even more insidious is by bidding on premium horses, the kill buyers end up competing with those who are legitimately shopping for a riding or farm horse, often driving them out of the market.
Alex's article is just the transparency this dirty little secret needs. While slaughter is banned in the U. S., American horse lovers need to be reminded that the practice still exists just across the border, which is where many of the "retired" American racehorses end up.
Keep it up Alex! The horses thank you....
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News like this makes me sick. The companion animals that we love are being slaughtered and eaten in other countries. I just read that on some island they were talking puppies and kittens and putting large fish hooks in them to use for shark bait. Honest to God, people don't look so good to me anymore...give me a cat and a dog anybday for good company.
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