Animal welfare organizations calling on CFIA to immediately halt exporting live horses
Global News
A group of animal rights organizations are calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to halt the practice of exporting live horses overseas for slaughter.
A group of animal rights organizations are calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to halt the practice of exporting live horses overseas for slaughter.
This comes after the organizations Animal Justice and Life Investigation Agency, a Japan-based animal protection group, conducted an investigation that they say revealed a “disturbing pattern” of flying live horses from Canada to Japan for slaughter.
The groups tracked and obtained footage of four shipments of horses from Edmonton to Japan for slaughter. The organization alleges that each shipment exceeded the legal time limit of 28 hours to transport horses without food, water, or rest. They say the animals were transported from rural Alberta to Edmonton International Airport, where they waited in crates for hours before being flown to Alaska and then to Japan.
“We were absolutely shocked by what we found. The industry has been saying all along that once horses land in Japan they have food and water and rest really quickly, but we found that’s absolutely not the case,” Kaitlyn Mitchell, the director of legal advocacy for Animal Justice, told Global News.
“These shipments are taking between four hours and 20 minutes and six and a half more hours after landing in Japan. Which is shocking; it means these horses are in transport for way longer than we every realized.”
In a report released last week, Animal Justice says based on their investigation and an analysis of government documents obtained by the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, over the past seven months all shipments of horses from Winnipeg exceeded the legal time limit, while 60 per cent of shipments from Edmonton exceeded the time limit as well.
Now the organization, along with several other animal rights groups including the Winnipeg Humane Society, are calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to halt the practice of exporting horses overseas.
“We have asked the CFIA to look into the shipments that we documented, and we are calling for an immediate moratorium on these shipments until the companies involved can show that they will comply with the law,” Mitchell said.
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