THE EXPORT OF HORSES FOR SLAUGHTER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The Minister of Agriculture states that during 1929 no British horses, exported for butchery, were slaughtered in Belgitim or at Vaugirard, and that all horses exported for butchery during that year were humanely killed. May I state certain facts that show the impossibility of such exact statistics, or of such precise knowledge ?
On landing in Belgium, a horse must take a working or slaughter licence, and butchers generally take a working licence for slaughter horses, to avoid the restrictions attached to a slaughter licence. With a working licence horses are practically Belgian and can be sold in the markets. In
Holland the great majority of- our horses are, ..after a final veterinary examination, " freed,' i.e., placed' on the same footing as Dutch horses. Most of them are sold in the great
cattle markets; •
Butchers frOm ail over Europe buy horses at the great Belgian and Dutch markets, and it is impossible to say when, where or how many of our horse:4 sold in those markets are killed. We can, by our knowledge of the traffic and by watching it, make a fairly correct rough estimate .of the number of horses exported for butchery, but, for the reasons stated above (and which anyone can verify); precise statistics are unobtainable. The Minister may state truly that no British horses were slaughtered during 1929 in Belgium or at Vaugirard. Can he say how many horses killed at those places were " BritiSh" a Week earlier ? Once,. when I was ordered- out of Vaugirard, and protested that where our horses go I have a right to follow them, a butcher answered, "•They are not English horses. You have sold them." That is literally true of many of our horses' sold for slaughter.— I am, Sir, &e., A. M. F. COLE. International League Against the Export of Horses for Butchery. 11 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, IV .C. 2.
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