Live-horse export court case in Vancouver to draw protesters
Credit to Author: David Carrigg| Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2019 04:19:40 +0000
A group of horse-welfare advocates are expected outside the Federal Court in downtown Vancouver on Wednesday, as a judge begins looking at the enforcement of laws around flying live horses to Asia for human consumption.
“Apparently there are a lot of supporters who are supposed to be coming tomorrow,” said Vancouver animal-rights lawyer Rebeka Breder, who is representing the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition in the two-day judicial review commencing Oct. 30.
The coalition claims the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is intentionally ignoring two animal welfare laws around crating the horses for live export to Japan and South Korea, where horse meat is a delicacy.
“We are asking the court to look at what we say is an ongoing and unlawful course of conduct over the last several years, where they have allowed horses to travel together instead of segregating them and also allowing the tops of their heads to touch the tops of their crates,” Breder said. “If they want to continue doing that they should, according to the regulations, be putting partitions in the crates, so they can still be in one box.”
In August, the coalition filed a notice of application in the Federal Court of Canada, naming Canada’s Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food as respondent. This ministry oversees the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, that in turn is responsible (under the Health of Animals Act and Health of Animals Regulations) for the humane treatment of animals during transportation in and out of Canada.
Under those regulations, large horses are not supposed to be placed with other large horses in the shipping crates, and the crates need to be high enough so that the horse’s head and ears do not touch the ceiling. In the case of live horse transport, the crates are made of wood with gaps between each board, so the ceiling is several slats with netting on top.
According to notes filed in court, in 2017 there were almost 5,000 horses exported to Japan for human consumption. The horses can be worth anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 a head and are flown on average 114 at a time in crates with as many as four per crate. The flights can take up to 18 hours and the horses are crated several hours before the flight. They are not supervised during the flight, but are inspected by CFIA veterinarians before departure. There have been several horse deaths and many more injuries since the trade began two decades ago. Often, horses fall on take off and landing, and the fragile nature of a horse’s lower leg make them prone to break or be injured.
Horses in a crate at the Calgary airport waiting to be flown to Japan or Korea where they will be slaughtered for human consumption, in August, 2018. [PNG Merlin Archive]
The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food filed a response to the application.
Horses in a crate at the Calgary airport waiting to be flown to Japan or Korea where they will be slaughtered for human consumption, in August, 2018. [PNG Merlin Archive]
In that response, it states the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s “enforcement policy” regarding to the two laws the coalition has brought to the court’s attention “is based on risk of harm to horses and a balancing of the benefits of strict enforcement of various statutory provisions against the purpose of the statutory scheme.”
The ministry claimed the introduction of amendments to Health of Animals Regulations in February, 2020, would override the coalition’s concerns. It claimed also that the netting on top of the crate didn’t count as ceiling, so it was OK if the horse’s ears or head touched it.
“The relatively soft and pliable crate netting is not considered a solid overhead structure,” it wrote. “It is acceptable to have ears occasionally come into contact with netting or poke through it when the horse’s head and neck are fully extended.”
Regarding the segregation of horses, the ministry wrote: “The export of groups of larger breeds of horses by air in large containers is a practice that was not foreseen when the current transport regulations were put into effect in 1977.”
As a result the authorities do not enforce the law that any horse higher than 14 hands be segregated. Segregation can occur within the same crate by installing a partition.
“For draft-type horses, particularly those socialized to each other and not very accustomed to individual handling, transportation without segregations can be done safely.”
The ministry added that there were changes made to how heavy a loaded crate could be when seven horses died on a flight in 2012.
Breder said the horse exporters, that are mostly based in Alberta, are working within the law.
“It’s the exporters who have to be the one who separate the horses,” she said. “But it’s the government at fault here, not the exporters, because the government has a duty to inspect and certify horses before transport and ensure the regulations are followed. They are certifying the regulations are being followed when they’re not.”