Horse in the Food Chain

Posted by George Vlachos on Apr 4, 2013 in Food & Drinks

See the timeline of the horse scandal that started from the Ireland’s Food Safety revelation and its sprawl across the European countries. Learn how horse meat enters the food chain, in what cases it is considered hazardous for human health and how trading works under the current obscure regulations.

vickysecho
I like the graphic – however it needs a few corrections. The US government has defunded horsemeat inspections again so no US horse slaughter plant will open here – at least not this year. However US, entirely unregulated horses are exported to Canada and Mexico, deemed Canadian and Mexican because they are slaughtered there – and then they are exported abroad after less than 1/2 of a percent are tested! Bute is a concern because you can find it in almost every stable and it is prohibited in food animals, but there are so many drugs used on horses in the US and Canada that allow owners to use them for performance, of which almost all are labeled not intended for food animals – MANY. And then there are the illegal drugs used that will never be tested for.
The horse dealers in the US and Canada can fabricate a drug affidavit immediately after acquiring a horse, claiming the horse has been drug free for 180 day when they have only owned it for 5 minutes. They can ship them for slaughter the same day. Like eating lab rats… I can’t believe that the US and Canada allows this terrorism on foreign food chains to continue. And it gets worse. The drug affidavits created by US horse dealers are Canadian and Mexican documents – not US documents. Canada and Mexico cannot prosecute a US citizen for falsifying a Canadian or Mexican document – and the US cannot prosecute because it is not a US document – it isn’t required here in the US and the US doesn’t even keep a copy. So the fraud continues – pumping entirely unregulated, largely adulterated horses into foreign food chains. Meanwhile Europe has the cumbersome horse passport that is also falsified but at least it is an attempt at food safety. Why try to regulate their own when the back door is wide open?