Winnipeg Humane Society, animal advocates want ban on live horse exports

The Winnipeg Humane Society wants a ban on theexport of live horses after sharingvideos online of more than a hundred horses in crates on the Winnipeg airport tarmac before they travelled overseas for slaughter.

The video, filmed at 3 a.m. on Monday when temperatures dipped below -30 C, shows a large aircraft pulling up alongside several wooden crates containing the horses. They were destined for Kitakyushu, Japan, on Korean Air Cargo, to be slaughtered and likely sold as raw meat.

"It must have been absolutely terrifying for these animals who have never even experienced anything other than life on a standard feed lot," said Brittany Semeniuk, animal welfare consultant for the Winnipeg Humane Society.

Semeniuk notedhorses are much more sensitive to sound than humans, and the sound of the jet was deafening.

"So that alone, mixed in with all of the other welfare concerns is just horrific and my heart goes out to these animals that have to go through a few days of terror before they're eventually slaughtered. It's absolutely inhumane."

She said the video was filmed by concerned citizens who monitor the welfare of the animals before they're routinely flown out of three cities: Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary, to be sold as meat in Asia. She said live horses are exported out of Winnipeg about once a month and 3,000-5,000are flown out of the city eachyear. Buyers in Japan prefer the horses to arrive alive, she added, so the meat is as fresh as possible for niche sashimi markets.

"This entire industry, it's not like our other agricultural sectors, it's not bringing money into the Canadian economy, it's not putting money into the pockets of Canadians the way some other industries might be justified. It's a very small industry but a very serious one with very serious welfare implications."

'Black eye on the city of Winnipeg'

A Winnipeg veterinarian shares the concerns of the Humane Societythat the practice is inhumane by subjecting animals to extreme temperatures, long periods of travel and prolonged exposure to stressand has been advocating for it to end for years.

"I think it's a black eye on the city of Winnipeg and on Canada as a whole," said Dr. Jonas Watson, veterinarian at Grant Park Animal Hospital.

"I'm sure that if you were to ask most Canadian citizens whether they support the live shipping of Canadian horses to be slaughtered in foreign countries under conditions that we know nothing about, I'm sure the great majority of Canadians would be appalled," he said.

He said the horsesare mainly purpose-bred like Clydesdales and Percherons,bred on big feedlots in Prairie provinces specifically for human consumption, although some unwanted animals from the horse auction in Grunthal can also wind up on the tarmac.

"It's not a coincidence that it happens in the middle of the night, in the dead of night," he said. He said cattle and poultry are also treated inhumanely, but believes thisto be in contravention of Canadian values, given the relationship between humans and horses.

"Horses are largely companion animals and they played a central role in human history over 20,000 years. They've been a central part of transportation and communication and agriculture and war.

Without our relationship with horses, human beings may not have gotten to where they are today. And this is the way we are showing our gratitude?"

Both he and Semeniuk want the federal government to ban the practice altogether andshut down the industry.

In a statement, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said CFIA veterinarians check the animals upon arrival at the airport and work diligently to ensure the containers they're in align with the Health of Animals Act, that they they are fit to travel and will be treated humanely.

"The horses that were exported live outdoors and are therefore acclimatized to Manitoba weather conditions. The loading of the crate at the airport was completed with oversight from a CFIA veterinarian and the crates were loaded onto the plane within two hours of being assembled on the tarmac," wrote the spokesperson.

Any animals that die or are hurt in transport must be reported under federal legislation, and none were on this flight, wrote the spokesperson.

Canadian cultural and musical icon Jann Arden has decried the practice, calling on concerned citizens to lobby government in stopping the live shipment of horses.

"Once they arrive in these countries like Japan, they're simply dropped from our radar. We don't know what the time frame is between their arrival and the time of their actual slaughter. We also don't know how they're being slaughtered. We simply have no idea what's happening at that point, we simply turn a blind eye because their welfare is no longer Canada's concern," said Semeniuk.

"The industry, I really see no justifiable reason for it existing here in Canada."