Well done Princess Anne!

@fat controller What's your definition of " working horse" - military/police horses, racehorse, dray horses, ploughing horses?

 

Agree the wastage in racing is appalling however to my mind anyway better a quick death than a lingering 1 riddled with worms nowt to eat and hooves so overgrown even standing is difficult. Not impressed at all with my neighbouring farmer atm who moaned that it would cost him £30 to have an old Ewe disposed of so just left her to it, how many lambs= money she had made for the farmer during her lifetime who knows but a fair bit I'd imagine. I had to witness the old soul taking quite a while to die during a very cold spell just recently. If I'd had a gun I'd have polished her off myself.Now I remember why I chose not to eat farmed meat over 30 years ago.

 

When I was working in Korea , I found out after a quick meal that the KFC I had was Korean Fried Corgi
Actually never worked in Korea , but my brother had many visits there. His advice was never too ask what you are eating , you really will not want to know.

 

I'm sorry but I cant see a horse that has worked for 20 yrs or so actually ever entering the human food chain.
Next some bright spark will suggest eating retired guide dogs.
Most of the fields around here are full of horses and I often wonder how well some are treated, a lot appear to be "wild" type ponies, probably belonging to gypsies.
If they could get a few quid for them I'm sure they would and it would encourage them to breed more.

 

It's cheap meat, mix it up with other meat = more profit, that what the horse meat scandal was all about,

 

Don't forget hunting horses, i love to know what happens to them

 

I supose I should have said, "legally"entering the food chain.

 

What breaks my heart even more than that is the fact that the relevant authorities, while happy to pay lip service, are totally unwilling to do anything. They say they can't unless there is a clear breach of law (I know, I've hassled the local council, the police, the RSPCA and the MP about it round here), but I happen to that wilful neglect and criminal damage are both crimes, and if a horse is neglected in public land, it is wilful neglect, and if that horse has no option but to churn the grass up and eat whatever is in range of its tether, and the person that tethered it knew it would do so, then that's criminal damage.

There was a kid not far from us, the same age as my oldest son (4 year old) ended up in A&E just a week or two ago after he was kicked in the head by horse, while playing in the local park where said horse was tethered.

The local chavs round here keep horses and ponies (mostly ponies, but that's semantics, they are the same species, just different height at the shoulders), and I'm told they get them dirt cheap. Like £50 ish. If they get confiscated, they just get another. They are a cheap mode of transport requiring no tax, test, insurance, fuel or maintenance and if when they are no good or if they get nicked or confiscated, cheap to replace.

Technically you have to have all sorts of paperwork for a horse, noting down details down to which way the hair swirls and where it does so, and this was the government's attempts to try to track the movements of livestock a good few years ago now, but it is not enforced.

The net result is that horses are now practically worthless unless they are either successful in sport, or good breeding stock. Your average mongrel pony, maybe part welsh cob and part shetland and part dartmoor and part all manner of things, is cheaper pound for pound than pretty much any other animal that is typically raised for its meat.

 

Ah...another example of greedy middlemen, then

 

Hit the nail on the head Clueless. You are MEANT to have a horse passport for all equines and indeed they are MEANT to be presented to either the vet when an equine is to be treated/vaccinated/ destroyed or if the knacker arrives to dispose of a carcass. These passports are about as successful as dog licences. Typically because the passports have the magic word horse attached to them, their cost is prohibitive and consequently plenty didn't bother to get them. Have I ever been checked to see if my equines (only 1 now) had them? NO! Just as with dogs and cats it is the indiscriminate breeding of equines which is the major problem. If I had a £1 for every time I've heard of a mare that had either a dodgy temperament or crap conformation or both! which the owner then decides to breed from. OMG the mind boggles. With breeding of racehorses unfortunately just because a horse's Father won The Derby and Mother won the Oaks it doesn't mean it will be fast, indeed the most expensive yearling ever sold never even made it to the race course. Who in their right mind is going to pay £1000s to a racehorse trainer to train something which just isn't athletic enough? The majority of racehorse owners (certainly flat race horses) know b all about horses far less have the knowledge or facilities to keep them so a race horse which isn't any good at it's job doesn't have much of a purpose/future. A few are sold out of racing to potentially become either hacks or say eventers. This isn't often very successful as the horses can end up with new owners that neither have the skill nor knowledge to ride/look after what can be very highly strung horses and the scenario more often than not ends in tears for the owner and misery for the horse.
I know there was an "armistice" in Southern Ireland a while back whereby unwanted equines were destroyed and disposed of for free to try and relieve the massive problems of over breeding and resulting neglect of 1000s of equines due to the recession. I'd be for a similar thing in the UK. The horse charities are bulging at the seams and will only take the very worst cases in. The RSPCA are worse than useless when it comes to equines.If anybody ever comes across a case of neglect please contact The World Horse Welfare. They are much more proactive and will take legal action against owners if the case warrants it.

 

If it`s the one I think you mean it was purchased for breeding, by one of the sheiks, and then was found to be sterile.

 

Oh dear, here we go again. Breaking news....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...e-hold-21-in-new-horsemeat-fraud-scandal.html

That's truly dreadful news as it means all the old horse meat jokes will be trotted again and meat eaters will strip the supermarket shelves of Quorn Family Roasts.


P.S. There's something odd going on because that news was posted on a US website at 7:41am this morning and it hasn't made the BBC News yet. http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/dec/16/horses-used-labs-end-french-dinner-tables/