The biggest trucks at any horse sale belong to the meat dealers. At the end of the day, once those awarded a second chance have been led away, the dealers open the remaining pens and run their unlucky purchases through the saleyard to the loading ramp.
Young, well-fed, well-muscled horses – such as thoroughbreds or standardbreds that have recently left the racing industries – are sent to export abattoirs in Peterborough, South Australia, or the Meramist abattoir in Caboolture, Queensland. The latter is currently being investigated for animal cruelty offences after footage aired on the ABC’s 7.30 program showed horses being shocked with electric prods, hit and kicked before slaughter.
The racing industry has reacted with shock and indignation, as has the public.
The censure from both extends not just to alleged breaches of animal welfare laws at the abattoir, which the Queensland government has said it will investigate, but to the mere fact of horses being slaughtered.
The slaughter of horses is legal in Australia and governed by the national standards that cover all animal slaughter, as well as industry codes of practice and state-based animal welfare legislation.
Export abattoirs such as Meramist must also comply with European Union rules around animal welfare, including those banning the use of the electric prodders on horses, and are required to have an Australian government vet on site while slaughter is taking place.
The RSPCA has called on the department to investigate whether all Australian standards were followed.
But while the slaughter of horses through methods identical to those used to slaughter cattle or sheep is ethically no different, it has caused significantly more upset.
For proof, look no further than the reaction to recent animal welfare protests at abattoirs. Some of the same state governments that scorned those protests have now called for an inquiry into horse deaths and what responsibility, if any, should be borne by the racing industry.
First, the racing industry must acknowledge that it cannot be absolved from responsibility for what happens to horses it bred for profit. It must also acknowledge statistics it puts forward about the fate of racehorses after retirement are at best misleading.
According to an estimate by the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, which undertook part of the 7.30 investigation, about 4,000 thoroughbreds a year were slaughtered at Meramist alone.
However, Racing Australia continues to state that less than 1% of all retired horses go to slaughter and another 1% are sent to livestock sales. Those proportions are set out in its annual report but the raw numbers are not stated. It also only records a horse’s first destination after it finishes racing, so if they are on-sold to slaughter it’s not tracked.
And everyone with even a passing knowledge of horses knows that once a horse retires from or fails at its original purpose, or the purpose for which it has been retrained, it is traded off as a depreciating asset, losing value and prospects with each transaction until another use can be found.
In short: the racing industry does not know where most horses end up.
That is why a Senate committee is investigating possible models for a national horse traceability register.
The inquiry is due to report in December, and followed a report by Guardian Australia in 2018 detailing a day at the saleyards in Echuca, in which 10 of the 33 horses of racing breeds (thoroughbred and standardbred) were bought by a buyer supplying the export abattoirs.
Without a national tracking system, Australia cannot hope to know how many horses of each type are slaughtered annually and how they ended up in the knocking box.
In South Korea, where at least 30% of Australian racehorses imported in the past five years have ended up in slaughter, as Guardian Australia reported in June, deaths are noted in the public racehorse database. In Australia, this information only comes to light in investigations by media or animal welfare groups.
The absence of a traceability scheme also leaves Australia vulnerable to biosecurity threats such as equine influenza. A 2007 outbreak cost the federal government $108m and proved that most recreational horse owners were unaware of requirements to inform authorities of all livestock on their property.
There is, in the submissions to the Senate inquiry, near universal support for the idea of a traceability scheme, provided someone else is paying for it. The federal government has spurned the responsibility. The racing industry, which is worth $9bn a year, says it ought not be their job to pay for a tool used to regulate the horse industry as a whole.
It is, after all, recreational horse owners who are responsible for most horses in Australia, including most of those that are put through sales, bred in irresponsibly high numbers, and subject to welfare complaints when they are neglected, or left to starve during drought.
The racing industry ought not be made the scapegoat for all those ills. But it also cannot make sweeping claims about racehorses not going to slaughter unless it makes a transparent and publicly accountable effort to track its own horses for the entirety of their hopefully long and happy retirements.
