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Conservative peer Lord Higgins writes for ePolitix.com ahead of a Lords debate on Monday about improving European Union regulations on horse transportation.
Over the past five years, I have pressed the government to do all they can to stop, or at least improve, the regulation of the appalling trade in the long distance transport of horses going to be slaughtered. It causes great and unnecessary suffering. Action needs to be taken on a European basis since the trade involves about 100,000 horses a year, most of which are shipped to Italy from Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
It is absolutely clear from the extensive, well-documented evidence collected by the charity World Horse Welfare that a high percentage of journeys made do not comply with the present inadequate regulations. It is essential that these should be enforced but they also need to be improved.
I have therefore tabled an oral parliamentary question for answer on Monday June 15 asking Her Majesty's government to press the European Commission to act and ensure that new regulation covers specifically a limit on journey times, watering, feeding, rest periods and fitness to travel.
This last point is particularly important since recent evidence suggest that the trade is not only objectionable on welfare grounds but it also dramatically raises the risk of serious infectious disease being spread across Europe.
I hope that as a result of this question, the government will re-affirm its commitment to dealing with what it has already described as an "abhorrent" practice.
Article Comments
I applaud Lord Higgins' efforts to regulate and (preferably abolish) this horrible trade which leads to such welfare abuses. Why can't horses for the meat trade be slaughtered in the country of origin and transported as refrigerated carcasses if people must eat them? I would plead, though, for a complete seperation between this problem and the normal transportation of equines for sport or breeding which is already burdened with vast amounts of effectively policed paperwork, veterinary care etc. This was designed to regulate the meat-horse trade but that is far harder to police so the focus tends to fall on us. (We travel our driving horses to several European countries).
elizabeth
14th Jul 2010 at 6:12 pm
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