Trailer: Horsemeat from Uruguay

Tierschutzbund Zürich (TSB Zürich) and Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF) conducted a long-term investigation at the Uruguayan horse slaughterhouses Clay, Sarel and El Amanecer, between January 2021 and December 2022. All three slaughterhouses are EU certified. In November 2022, the European Commission carried out an audit (inspection) in the slaughterhouses. TSB Zürich and AWF were on site before, during and after the EU audit and documented the situation. As already criticised by the EU inspectors in the 2018 audit report, the inspection was again manipulated by the slaughterhouse operators. The number of horses was greatly reduced and sick, injured, emaciated horses were removed from the slaughterhouse pastures before the audit. Broken shelters were repaired just in time. During the audit, the horses were kept on green pastures with sufficient food and water. Completely different than before and after the audit. Then, the horses were kept in dusty pens covered in excrements, with insufficient food and water supplies. AWF and TSB Zürich found a large number of injured, sick and emaciated horses on the premises of the slaughterhouses. In addition, the origin of many horses is unknown. Horse smuggling from Brazil is a serious problem in Uruguay. Criminal gangs are part of the horse supply chain. The traceability of the horses and their medical history is not guaranteed. That is why, for example, Swiss retailers and the largest Swiss importer, GVFI, stopped importing horsemeat from South America years ago. Today, Skin Packing is an important Swiss importer of horsemeat from Uruguay.

AWF and TSB Zürich, together with their partner organisations Animales Sin Hogar (Uruguay), Animals’ Angels (USA), Canadian Horse Defence Coalition (Canada), Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses (Australia), Dier&Recht (Netherlands), Fondation Franz Weber (Argentina), GAIA (Belgium), IHP Italian Horse Protection (Italy), and Welfarm (France), supported by Eurogroup for Animals (Brussels), call on the European Commission to stop horsemeat imports from cruel production.

Please sign the petition:
www.change.org/stopp-horsemeat-imports-en