HorseMeat on The Menu at 1st Annual Summit of the Horse?

If Sue Wallis and Friends had their way, it would! Below is a message being sent round today to her Pro-Slaughter Constituants, from The Horse-Slaughter Queen herself;

Hello Suscribers,

For today's Summit of the Horse blog we are sharing a reprint of an article written by Dan Pandolfo, a horse breeder and cattle rancher from Northgate, Sask., who says eating horse meat is more respectful than waste or abuse. This was originally published in the Western Producer on September 23, 2010.

There are many perspectives on the problems in the horse industry today. Dan shares one that many of us share.

Our hope is to bring all of the various perspectives together at the Summit of the Horse in Las Vegas to discuss calmly and rationally what needs to be done to restore the horse industry. We will not tolerate protests and obstruction, but if you come to the table with respect and decorum, you will be welcomed. I hope that you can join us!





Sue Wallis, Vice President
United Horsemen

Article;

Available horse meat a modern reality

I am a Saskatchewan horse breeder and cattle rancher. I read your Aug. 26 article ( "Horse breeding industry faces crisis") with interest and an open mind, and I feel compelled to give a different perspective.

In regard to Betty Coulthard's problems and the emotions spawned by the reality of product demand, I agree that it is difficult to see young horses go to slaughter plants.

However, I feel the same way about a pen of nice fat steers or heifers or a favourite productive cow that has spent her time on earth doing what she was meant to do - turning the earth's grasses and grains into life-sustaining protein.

After all, the relationship between mankind and forage-consuming animals has existed for well over 1,000 years.

Ms. Coulthard's perspective could be suspect to a lot of breeders and horse owners and potential new industry players. Making a statement such as " you have to raise 100 horses to get two good ones" is self-defeating when it comes to getting the public and horse enthusiasts to spend hard-earned dollars on the product of a specific breeding program.

In my program, I think if I raise one poor animal in 10, then I need to correct the problem as quickly as possible. In fact, I have a sales production program that includes a guarantee of a horse's quality, given proper care and animal husbandry is in place in the prospective customer's facility.

The truth about the price of horses is multifaceted. Part of it relates to the PMU industry.Canadian PMU producers were persuaded by the buyer of their product to produce papered stock to eliminate the impression that they were raising horses destined for human consumption. Producers complied.

Supply and demand set the price on the horses, and producers had to sell them to the pleasure and performance horse industry to comply with their contract holder and their own association. The result: a massive number of papered horses of varying quality. It created a glut on the market.

Producing high quality sport horses is a tough game to play. Even the best bred prospects sometimes do not work out as well as intended.

This has left a sour taste in the mouths of many people who invested in PMU bred horses. A number of these horses work out well but a greater number prove to be a poor investment.


Good horses still bring good money. The same is true of all top quality products. And yes, it's true that the market does not bear as much fruit as it did 10 years ago. We are in recession and everyone is included, horse breeders and users alike.

At this time in our history, horses are a luxury. Supply and demand are the dominant factors in this world and probably always will be.

North Americans are foolish and wasteful. Apparently we are so rich that we can, because of an emotional misconception, afford to throw away one of the highest quality red meat sources in the world.

Horse meat is lower in fat and cholesterol than beef or bison. It has higher protein per gram and is also rich in trace elements.

In our culture, obesity is running rampant, causing all kinds of expensive and damaging health issues. Yet we think eating horse meat is a sin, while the rest of the world consumes more than four million horses per year and has lower obesity rates.

This is a ridiculous situation. We have people in our own country who struggle to feed their families a good balanced diet. At the same time we sell our horses to a few fully integrated horse meat market retailers for a fraction of what they are worth on the world market.

I have been told that a 1,200 pound horse, when processed, retails for an average of $ 2,750 per animal. If you figure a yield of 65 percent on the rail, the meat is worth $3.52 per lb.

I have also heard that in some European and Asian regions, the best cuts can sell for up to $40 per lb. Of course, those would be fed horses for a specific market but it nevertheless appears that horse meat is worth a premium to beef in a lot of countries.

We see horses sold in this country for a measly 20 to 40 cents per lb., all because there is no domestic demand.

Yet 4.6 million horses are consumed by humans every year in other countries and cultures. Are we to assume these cultures are ethically corrupt, uncivilized or less intelligent than North Americans are?

The animal rights people have been successful in shutting down the slaughter horse industry in the United States, making U.S. slaughter horses worthless. Integrated retailers are able to buy American horses for the cost of assembly and trucking.

It seems unbelievable, but the anti-slaughter groups and animal rights people are crushing the taxable economic activity of the horse industry. At the same time they are enabling the horse slaughter monopolies in Canada and Mexico to make bigger profits than ever.

Using horses to sustain human life is far more respectful of these animals than to let them starve or put them down and waste their remains.

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Bloggers Note: The asshole author said ONE thing right. The PMU Industry plays a HUGE part in the production of so many "un-wanted" horses.

Axe Falls On 38 PMU Ranches

There were once 400 equine ranches on the eastern Prairies

Gordon Mason, an equine rancher for over four decades, stands with his favourite saddle horse on his ranch near Killarney. The contract for his 66-head operation was among those cancelled in the latest round of cutbacks in the
PMU industry.

“It was a steady income… You knew what you were going to get a year or two in advance. There’s not too many commodities in agriculture you can do that with.”

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On a cloudy afternoon, Gordon Mason asks his wife Gladys for help finding his cowboy hat.

“Going out in style,” she says with a faint smile.

He drops it onto his head, grabs a pretty halter and leather shank, and heads out the door to fetch his favourite saddle horse.

With a broad valley of hardwoods in the background, and a pen full of Double G Ranch’s fine quarter-horses filling out the background, Mason, 67, stands for a picture.

The land around these parts was settled by his ancestors, who first arrived in the 1880s. They even left a written account of their early struggles hauling hay with a team of oxen and making trips on foot to Brandon for supplies.

GOOD LIVING

In 1966, he started out with 17 mares on the line, as one of the first producers of pregnant mare’s urine, from which the hormone replacement drug premarin is derived.

Over the years, they added more mares as their contracts grew. Last winter, they had 66 mares in the barn.

“If you don’t overspend, it’s a good living,” said Mason. “It was a steady income. You knew what you were going to get a year or two in advance. On the contract, you knew right to the nickel. There’s not too many commodities in agriculture you can do that with.”

The Masons were among 38 PMU ranches that received notice last week from Pfizer, the company that bought out Wyeth last fall, that their contract wouldn’t be renewed.

They and other producers are to receive compensation worth 75 per cent of their last year’s production, and assistance with marketing and trucking costs in selling their animals.

DOWNSIZING

He plans to keep at least 10 horses around the place. The rest of the horses will have to be sold, because there’s not enough income from selling foals to make a go of it, he said.

Even if the owner breaks them himself, the training process takes a lot of time.

“If you get $3,000 for a horse, you’ve got that much in him by the time he’s three (or) four years old. It costs about $700 a year to keep a horse,” he said. “You’d make about five cents an hour. It takes a lot of riding to make a horse good.”

In recent decades, the PMU industry came under fire from animal rights activists. The industry responded with ever-tighter rules and regulations enforced by field managers who verified that the horses were being given proper feed, access to water, sufficient bedding straw, and regular exercise outside the barn during the winter collection season that ran from late October to March.

WELFARE CONCERNS

Also, in response to criticism that too many of the foals produced were going to the slaughter market, the North American Equine Ranching Information Council (NAERIC) created cash incentives to encourage PMU producers to raise top quality animals for a wide variety of work, recreation and sport uses.

“As far as those mares in the barn, they were all treated pretty good,” he said. “I’d rather be a PMU mare standing in a warm barn than one standing out in the bush somewhere.” (Wow..no consideration for the fact that mares are stalled so tightly that they cant turn around, let alone lay down if they want, and they are kept standing there six or eight months at a time and never get to see the sun. No mention is made here either of the fact that the mares are standing in constant pain due to a tube being shoved up into their urinary tract to catch their pee. Take a look at one of those contraptions wedged between their thighs 24 hours a day 7 days a week...the cause of much pain and discomfort not only due to chaffing and the like but oftentimes infections due to uncleanliness. PMU mares are not "happy horses" at all as this PMU farmer trys to portray....do not believe the hype. PMU mares have a TERRIBLE life,...the least of which is to have their babies torn away from them the instant they are born and are generally "thrown out back" and left to die, ..their fresh-dead young bodies sold to renderer / leather sellers so they can sell them to hi-end leather markets so fashion designers like Gucci make their "pony-skin" bags and shoes and stuff. The whole business is disgusting and there is no way to sanitize it.I am glad to hear more of these terrible places closing but the fear is, of course, what will become of these horses? We must keep our eyes on them and try to keep them from harm.)

But a 2002 study by the Women’s Health Initiative which uncovered adverse health effects from premarinbased hormone replacement therapy (HRT) sparked a steep decline for the PMU industry, and a switch to lower doses reduced demand for estrogen used for treating post-menopausal symptoms.

Lisa Ross, a spokesperson for Pfizer-owned Wyeth Canada, said in an emailed statement that a recent review of inventory requirements found that a 60 per cent cut in the number of PMU producers was necessary.

The reduction will also affect 15 per cent of the 170 workers at Wyeth’s Brandon plant, as one of three production lines is shut down.

“The company is committed to treating employees and ranchers fairly and reasonably and to helping make this transition as smooth as possible,” she wrote.

SHARP DECLINE

Greg Little, a PMU rancher from Decker and president of NAERIC, said that the news May 12 was “sad.” After last year’s cutbacks, which saw seven ranches exit, many hoped that supply and demand would stabilize.

The plan to cut back by 60 per cent that was announced recently came as a shock to many, he added, given the reduction from the peak of over 400 ranches in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota in 2003. The latest round will leave 22 ranches in the province, and four in Saskatchewan.

His ranch, Little Valley Quarter Horses, was spared.

“Most of the ranchers have a lot invested in their operations and everybody feels for their horses,” he said. “I think we can find homes for them in productive markets. It’s going to take some work, but nothing comes easy in this world anymore.”

Some PMU ranchers who received bad news last week declined to comment.

Marylin Warkentin, 58, was one of the few who were willing to talk. She and husband Rob have run a 78-stall operation near Virden since 1992 with a mix of registered Belgian, Percheron and Spotted Draft horses.

Everyone in the industry has been “living on the edge” since the first big cuts in 2003, she said.

A day after being informed that their contract was being cancelled, she was undecided about what they might do, or how many horses they might keep.

“We’ve gotten used to having horses around all the time,” she said. “When we first got in, we bought seven heavy horses at a sale. Now, to go down to say 20 mares would seem like not too many horses. I guess we just have to take our time to figure it out.” daniel.winters@fbcpublishing.com


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