The clock starts ticking for horses slaughter-bound to Canada, but is it really enough?

The countdown for the unnamed horses who will eventually be sent to Canadian slaughterhouses starts today.

In exactly six months, on July 31st, 2010, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) will require that each horse presented for slaughter is accompanied by his own "passport."  This "Equine Information Document" (EID) is supposed to include a standardized description of the horse, as well as a record of any medical conditions he's had, and drugs he's received, during the last 180 days.

Anti-slaughter activists are hailing this new directive as a major victory, with the potential to save countless equine lives from the horror of being sent to Canada to be killed for meat.  They argue that the six-month accountability period will make it virtually impossible for "kill buyers" to make a profit by reselling to slaughterhouses.  But I'm not so sure it's really a cause for celebration.

The new regulations have been formulated solely in an effort to keep drugged and sick animals out of the food chain; they weren't designed to prevent healthy horses from entering it.

From the perspective of this equine advocate, the new pronouncement is fraught with pitfalls, in terms of its ability to close the pipeline that funnels discarded U.S. horses into Canada.  The EID asks whether any drugs or medical treatments have been administered to a horse or whether the horse has been diagnosed with an illness during the shorter of three periods:  1) since January 31, 2010; 2) during the last 180 days; or 3) during the time the horse's current owner has owned him.

That's a huge loophole, because the kill buyers can truthfully just say, "no."   They are not required to actually present a health certificate, nor must they provide any information about the identity of the veterinarian who last cared for the horse, to attest that none of the banned susbstances could be present in the horse's system.

The CFIA does ask horse owners to complete an "Owner Declaration" with "at least six continuous months of documented acceptable history," but it's certainly possible to envision how this chronology could be fudged, or imagine the birth of a new black market in forged papers.

No, we can't rely on the Canadian meat industry to protect America's horses.  The only way we can do that is to educate people about what really happens to slaughter-bound horses, and ultimately, to secure the passage of pending federal legislation that will cripple the U.S. slaughter underground, by prohibiting any person from sending a horse to such a cruel death.

What you can do to stop horse slaughter:

Contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to support Senate Bill 727, which will ban horse slaughter

Urge your U.S. Representative to co-sponsor H.R. Bill 503, the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act