TOXIC HORSE MEAT-STOP SLAUGHTER HORSES

American Horses are Pets, and have not been used for human consumption meat and thus has never been regulated of health standards for those that choose to dine on our Horses (mainly France, Belgian, and Italy). So we should cease and desist the practrices and marketing, exporting of our american horses! We Americans would prefer to preserve our history and our love of them. Here is the facts of the American horse meat meals we send to europe!

food safety regulations and their enforcement and information about how bovine spongiform encephalopathy BSE or "mad cow" disease spreads have raised questions over whether European and Asian horsemeat eaters are insulated from the disease that has caused the deaths of 94 people across Europe. 

European and Asian meat eaters have naively cut back on their consumption of cattle, swine and sheep turning instead to eating horse presumably as a safer alternative?  Irony is that Europeans are buying up Canadian horsemeat largely comprised of American horses exported to Canada for slaughter. 

 In  the USA, horses are not under the same scrutiny by the USDA*, as other meat source animals used for human consumptions 

Related diseases in other species have contracted diseases in the same family as BSE known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies or TSE's.  According to the California Animal Health & Food Safety Lab http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/Animal_Health/Animal_Disease_News.html(105 W Central AveSan Bernardino, CA 92408
(909) 383-4287) , there is no program, and they do not test, for TSE during routine equine necropsies.

Horses which are slaughtered by use of a compressed air pneumatic captive bolt gun have a four-inch bolt shot into their skull resulting not in death but irreversible damage to the brain at which time they are bled. Recent research has shown that pneumatic stunners can force brain and spinal tissue into the heart and other parts of the body. Due to concerns about BSE, pneumatic stunners should not be used due to concerns that people could get new variant creutzfeldt Jakob disease (mad cow).
http://www.hoofpac.com/press/bsehoofandmouth.html

What horses are being provided for the European fine dinning plates?
come from auctions, private sellers, and from wild herds. Sometimes these horses are sick and injured, but they can also be for sale by their owners. Most are brought to the slaughterhouses by contract buyers who collect horses from all across the country. Many of these horse are not recorded or informed of the worming, drugs, disease, or chemical usages on them prior to slaughtering them for human consumptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_slaughter

and that fine race horse that sent to slaughter and became someone's dinner?  well here you go...toxicity at its highest!
A study traced records on sixteen TB race horses that were given PBZ on race day and would have also entered the food chain had they not been rescued. The study was limited to race horses because of the availability of drug records, but phenylbutazone is one of the most common drugs used in the treatment of musculoskeletal injuries in horses.

Because of the bone marrow toxicity caused by PBZ in humans, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has set no safe levels of PBZ and bans its use food producing animals, including horses. While PBZ is but one of the numerous banned substances that are routinely given to US horses, it is one of the most dangerous.

A new study shows that the USDA testing could not have been accurate. Indeed, the study uncovered a pilot test performed by the USDA in 2004 and 2005 that used a different testing technique and found 8.3% of the meat to be contaminated with PBZ. http://madcowhorses.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-study-shows-horsemeat-danger-to-eat.html

OTHER RESOURCES AND LINKS:
http://interact.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/published-editorials/2010/03/reopening-horse-meat-slaughterhouses-just-say-whoa/

http://tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/canadian-food-inspection-agency-sidesteps-eu-quarantine-mandate/

http://www.vetsforequinewelfare.org/medications.php