horsemeat on a platter.

horsemeat on a platter, yes many years ago, i think it was 2013 for the very big one, the year of the horse meat scandal, the same connections have been caught out in the after years, some only last year got their punishment.

but they are back at it again. the irish found them out, and of course there are dutch hands in it too, they say and think of course.
as far as i could get it this evening even jan draap is back in business, it is not his real name, but he used it as a trade name, most would not think it a very strange name, but in dutch a horse is called paard, and if you spell that backwards you end up with draap.

usually he is not the only one, and after the great work done, by i think she was called felicia, but i am known to have a very bad memory for names, so felicity or something completely different it could be, but she traces the horses during transport to the start of the big scandal through europe, she worked for the guardian then.

aha, i am certainly better in betting than memorising names, here she is, felicity lawrence;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/horsemeat-burger-scandal-history-repeating

but she is followed up by the irish conor ryan;

https://www.rte.ie/news/investigations-unit/2024/0612/1454261-data-probe-reveals-thousands-of-irish-horses-missing-each-year/

the story must have taken the ferry to rotterdam, because the dutch only be exposed to it tonight.

so maybe it is better to leave the cheap pizza, lasagna, and all other snacks longer, short or in the form of balls for a not with meat on the go version.

in itself and if you are not irish or brittish there is not much wrong with eating horse meat, and if both countries simply did eat their home bred turf runners, you had no need for the dutch gang, who just change your last winner into a block of frozen meat.
we have a word you do not have for it, but it happened before that the english speaking community just took one, so this process as described by rte with the chips(the metal ones for identification) with a passport of another self proclaimed studbook usually is called omkatten. so the horses get a new chippy, the metal one, and a old or new passport, just what is next available enough.

and really horse meat does taste well when used in the traditional way, like in the stoved limburgian sourmeat dish, or served as a great steak sold as from boeboe to people in amsterdam, who loved it, but buying meat in amsterdam from someone called loetje what in itself comes from the language bargoens, a kind of slang, french soldiers couldn't make cheese off, but it means a shrewd and handy in a controversial way person.
but they promised if they say they sell you cow, it would no longer be horse. and that is a good thing, because i have over 30 restaurants, and there would hardly be enough horses in ireland to feed all that.

but they also just freeze it in large blocks, and no idea what they do after that, because what ends up in the cheap market no longer looks or tastes likes meat.

the reality is most likely that 2 just been brave for about 2 years and that means usually the noses of the state start looking in other bad business, and mark the horsemeat business as low risk.

the uk must be risky in this matter, now well after leaving the bureaucratic eu, but with a side door open near ireland, they maybe have not even a need to kat it om. i mean who would really know what is in these sausages, and as long as you keep on believing it is all but horse or dog, who cares about it.

but at least the former walkers of the turf had maybe some people who once had a public that no longer called hoerah to it, but started boe-ing and brought some one into an bad idea. what goes up has to come down in the end. i mean the uk delegation that ended up last time doing things with horse meat must be got out of jail by now. i have no idea, but was the worst one not booked for 12 years, so if you do the same as us, with 3/4 done and in their way good behaving =out.

horsemeat, without the irony.

was the first post one with irony and black melancholy, there is so much more behind this story to tell.

we are told by the official organisation that there are no signals that any illegal horse meat is going around in our snacks. because all horses for slaughter are checked by a vet before it, and if there are questions, they will investigate it, the passports and microchips will be checked.

this is such an stupid answer, there always is and was a level of unofficial slaughtering in animals, all food animals, everywhere, it is not a specifically dutch habit , or french, or uk, or any other, that is a forever hunt.

horses are maybe quite big, but their paper trail is small, they have passports, at least they need one when in the eu, i have no idea if the uk has its own rules in place after brexit, but when in the eu, horses need a passport and a identification on their body, most common this will be a microchip, this is a very simple device and only contains a number.

there are also many horses, and horses out there for many uses, most for so called sports, breeding and meat. there can be many reasons why a horse no longer can do where it was bought for, and that is where this problem starts. if you want a horse, go out and buy one, there are very serious buyers who let a horse check in all ways possible before they buy it, others look more to the price and buy what they can afford.

only none of the buyers really has planned for a horse that can no longer be fit for use, or simply grows too old. the same with breeders, they breed for the good ones, but lack planning for the ones that are not.

and you can not simply put a horse out on the street at garbage days, or bring it to the dump. there are other choices to make, first you can call out a vet and kill it through injections, it is called the ‘humane’ way. but you still have to arrange for the body and in this modern world that means, destruction or at least in the netherlands a cremation. in other countries a burial can still be an option, or you sell it to a butcher to be slaughtered.

but the butcher of horses usually does not buy its own slaughter horses, there are in between traders. they buy and resell the horse. horse slaughter is different from slaughtering cows and pigs, so you have to have a bit different equipment and knowledge, and there are not that many around. it can be hard to have enough horses around to keep a company going in a certain flow, so it often can happen only some days horses will be slaughtered.

as in all professions there are very good ones and bad ones, but for the good ones it means you need to travel, what can be difficult at best. the law says when an animal is lame you cannot travel with it, other than to a veterinary clinic. officially you still can choose for a butcher coming to the stables and kill the horse there, but this has a lot of extra rules, most butchers would choose to not do that.

the route through the vet is costly, easily between 200 and 500 euros, on top of that the fee for hauling the dead horse off your premises.
selling the horse to a trader means you get money, not much, horse meat is not the kind that is highly sought after, so a few hundred euros depends on the type of horse at best.

and that choice made by the last owner/user of the horse decides what comes next. too small an amount of people not only feel it as their duty of care, but also act on that when it is about ending the life of a horse.

and i agree it is not the most beautiful part of having horses, and in that it is pretty equal to all animals you keep. so there are happening two things, first horse users who make up all kind of stupid solutions to get the horse of their hands, like it can still be a company horse, it can always be used as a coaching horse, or they decide to believe a pair of blue eyes, as the dutch say, who tell beautiful tales about a pension on the evergreen fields without the costs. horses are not cheap or easy to keep so it is always nice if others pay for that.
and we all are lucky that horses are so big as they come, they can not be that easily shown the stable doors, like we often have as an used option with cats, dogs, rabbits and birds. i do know about at least one owner that did do it.

the next part is that bodies of law put a lot of duck tape on bad habits that can happen with horses no longer functional or wanted. there is no true set of rules how to handle when a horse no longer is of use or want, has health problems with that or is simply old.

no, there are rules about transport and slaughter, there are registration rules, a lot of food safety rules too, but not even a guideline with; the what to do when a horse must go. If they died there are rules, but not how to make them.

as long as you pay your taxes on the gain you make on buying and selling horses there is little in your way, there are still horse markets, and there is still some regulation and oversight on the wellbeing of the animals too. there are rules about the amount of hours and distances animals can be transferred, there are still some regulations when you have to pass the borders, even a bit more rules when the destination is for slaughter.

there are a lot of regulations about when can a horse be slaughtered, they have usually to have a passport, an original one, handed to the horse owner before it gets it reached a specific age, i think it is before 9 months now. there must be something in or on the body to recognise the horse and connect it to its passport, most times by a microchip. there are very minimalistic rules to regulate all things about care, and welfare and well being of a horse. water and food in time, and a dry spot to lay down is enough. for transport there are rules how they must travel, when there is a need for a rest period. passing borders means a veterinary check and some registration.

but all governments miss the hands to check on it all. and even under the regulations and rules by law is a eu consensus, but the countries still can seek their own preferences and solutions from that.

as far as we on mainland europe are always told, in ireland and the uk there seems to be no official horse slaughtering possible. and it is made very easy to ship large amounts of horses by trucks and ferry to mainland europe.

so the people who do not want a real solution to their own problem, find it okay to ship the problem abroad. and there always is one to find to offer a solution to manage that, so they must be very cheaply priced, and there are no eyes that do check for any welfare at all in the uk and ireland, the uk seems to escape now in the start of this story, but it is still part of it.
you cannot simply think we do not want to eat horsemeat, so we do not slaughter them, but he, no problem let’s send our problem to the neighbours.
this is a made market.

and all others are not much better we simply do the same, just sell the horse to a trader, or a storyteller and
you no longer own that problem.

and the world of traders in horses always was a shady one, there are many who are okay, but also many who are in for only the money, no other pretences about their name and stance in society or the job, no just the money. so a part will be the ones that tell the fairy tails of the evergreen fields and horse on its pension years, buy or try to buy horses that have to go for the lowest amount possible with a nice sob story about seeking the horse for a child, grandchild or the odd niece.
still it is up to us to believe such stupid stories. if you are been part of the bunch that had to pay often for many years all the cost for care of that horse, we only can fool ourselves, when someone offers to take for a small fee in your hand and also take on to care for that horse for free.

and it is made easy, because using the old ways, and keep control on how that horse ends its life is made difficult. your heart is often a big fence to jump, but let it killed by injection through a vet when the horse still looks to be fit to make it still some years in a reasonable fit state is almost impossible, there are too few vets who see that as a duty to the horse. they feel they are not there to kill such horses. slaughter is difficult, much worse as a horse is a bad traveller, and it is hard to find one who has a licence to slaughter horses that will assist one on one with the owners too. understandable in some ways, they do not want to deal all day with the emotional last owner of the horse. they usually work with the same traders as middlemen.

but horse slaughter has another problem, and that is the result of caring for a horse during is life, horses can and do need medication at times. and most of the medication is on list as we do not want any risk on our dining plates so, we have medication that is working very well even with very low risks in horses, but usually only a handful have that unique allowed to be used in horses stamp on it, the market is too small to do the needed research so it is often a choice between lack of care, or use medication that is not listed for horses.

the biggest problem is in the use of painkillers for horses, the best working versus risk for a good level of pain killing is still a substance that is called ‘bute’ , or phenylbutazone. once also used in humans, but they have much more side effects that can be very harmful to humans. they do have side effects in horses too, but when you set the effect as a painkiller to that, it is an accepted one. most bad outcome cases even go back to incorrect use, not so much the medication itself.

bute has a name build in years, as it is forbidden, well that is not how it works, it is not permitted, it is not on a list that permits the use in horses. but off label use is still possible, but officially all you use, even once in the life of any horse it means it must be excluded from slaughter for human consumption. it does not mean the horse cannot be slaughtered, it still can be used in animal feeds and foods.
in this story at the moment, it is all about former racing horses. sorry that is a misunderstanding, it is about all kinds of horses, only it is much easier to trace back the history of a registered racing horse. the reality is it is about all kinds of irish horses, no longer wanted to keep and care for by their owners, bought and shipped to get slaughtered in a country that can still slaughter horses.

and simply deciding we do not slaughter horses could even be a way to find a solution to the horses no longer wanted or needed is useless, because that is the true problem. that is where it starts.

and this time again some dutch traders are walking in, this is not the only route, it will because of the attention just get a bit busier coming months on the routes to elsewhere, where it all happens in the same way.

the handicap is that governments do make rules, but they believe that it stops there, it never does, rules can only work if you keep looking out for those who do not obey them.

so to let these kinds of scandals happen, the reality is, it never stopped after the very big scandal, and this story has a lot of eyes that pretended to just not have seen it happen.
and it is great to give it the attention it needs again. great work, but the reality is, that animal rights and care groups and the media did stop with giving it attention too. they sadly need a big story to reach our eyes and ears, and through that our minds too.

yes, because we all are at the end of this line, by consuming cheap snacks, without asking what is in it, we trust the rules and regulations almost blindly when we dig in, only when we start to think with a full belly it gets more critical. and yes, it is criminal to use routes and in this way handle horses just for our plate, but it does not stop there, it is about what we feed our meat eater pets too.

every time we put something back because we find a price on a product with meat a bit to high, we set events like this around horse meat in motion. if we are asked what we want and even more when we know the answers will be used to tell the world something, we often tell we know the differences, but when it is comes to buying we zone out. not only for our own plate, but also that of fluffy and hannibal.

and that government believes highly in its system, it sends out the vets to check the paperwork. but the passports of most of these horses are the real deal, the microchips itself are real too. it is the process of how the passports and chips end up with that horse that is wrong and against many laws.

most passports in racehorses are simply from this organisation;
https://www.weatherbys.co.uk/general-stud-book/bloodstock-studbook/ireland-registrations-and-applications i just pulled the registration page and see all the regulations in your own time. looks great of course, but they use in race horses microchips that have no code for the country of origin.

what made it very easy to simply ask a fresh passport in the past to the horse, all you needed was pay for it. because these passports have a few pages to declare many, but not all medications that are used in the horse. most vets do not be very hard to forget to write it there and sign it off, but horse owners are very good in finding ways to use routes around the vets too. so it is hard to find a living horse of say 15 or 20 years that never had in reality be treated with stuff that had to be declared in the passport, it would be even strange for any horse to live so long without having not at least once some medication on the list, thart has to exclude them from fit for humane consumption.

before the last change in rules it was possible for the owner to simply fill out the i declare this horse is not fit for human consumption, and let is sign off by the vet. but some stupid minds found this a bad idea, because it would restrict a possible new owner in its rights to make choice about it. but many horse owners did it pretty standard, because that horse would be seen as a pet, and not automatically as maybe it will end up on a plate. it worked much easier, vet and owner had no hard thinking to do, but could just choose what was best for that horse. something that could no longer be accepted of course in the world of humans.

it was not that if you sold the horse it was something hidden, it was already in blue or black ink in the passport. and buying horses without passports is not allowed by the same set of regulations. so it is simply up to buyer beware.

but it is such a sloppy international used system, each country has its own database, that often is not easy to find, or use from abroad, so in this case there are a bunch of traders who simply collect the no longer wanted horses in ireland. they do not steal them, they simply buy them of the hands of their owners and often users too.

the border inspection and sometimes short quarantaine is easy to fix. and you can pick easily if you want them checked as horses for slaughter, for reselling as usable animals, or breeding perhaps. it is not a check about the quality in these aspects, only if they have a passport and chip, and are the same, and a visual inspection so no nasty diseases travels with them. it is a very, very basic inspection by a vet.
these transports that been let through the border have been many times the source of disease outbreaks, like influenza, because there is still no true obligation to vaccinate, rhino because lots of horses are simply carriers and stress makes them infectious again, the same with strangles. and many less known others.

the welfare check seems to be lost everywhere. so it does not matter that there are rules, if you never check them, why would people obey them.
and if you look to the rte reports it could have been solved by a visual check too, this was not by the rules at all.

before the horses arrive at a slaughter facility, most are loaded of the trucks and inspected, by the traders, some will look good enough to resell as a usable riding horse to a nitwit and carefree buyer for a nice low budget price. sorry not much empathy for the buyers, if you want to be stupid in this matter that is a choice. a horse is simply to big to make it into buying one on impulses alone. still happens daily.

and of course it is all fraudulent, microchips you can simply post order in this case from germany, and with a bit of money you can easily pick a organisation that is allowed by the government to give out horse passports, in other cases microchips from already slaughtered horses are reused, or there was made use of the ‘help i lost the passport’, or the ‘help my horse his microchip is no longer readable’ routes.
there are no checks planned on how regulations and rules are used in this matter, it only works on amount of complaints. and if a solution route is find out there are still enough others to fill that gap. because finding out one, it never leads to check them all.

so there are many horses, not only slaughtered, but many also ending up in poor conditions as riding horses. the last group tells us the ages are often way of, up to 10 years even is not uncommon. geldings, can end up being full stallions.

and the ones who lost most of it in it all are the horses, maybe the slaughtered ones less than the ones sold as fit for use. most of the work about finding out what the real identity and history is behind the group that too often is not fit for any use at all is still in the hands of volunteers.

and because the slaughtering itself can be done for humane and animal food and feed, and yes there is a bit of checking in that process, first and most based on the passport and microchip, but that does no longer show the true history of the horse at all, so it is simply a real passport, only the content is fraud so the vet has no ways to say not fit for humane consumption at all based on that. the second inspection is usually visual on the carcass. but what gets degraded from human consumption still can be used in animal feeds, like for dogs and cats. and it seems to be very easy because the meat simply is ending up in boxes and all you need is a fresh set of stickers, and you can print all you want on them, and use ‘omkatten’ to make it fit for humane consumption again.

and all that is there to know and check is a paper trail and that is something that can be simply fiction at best. there still are not flying brigades of inspectors to check every detail, to check if what sticker says this is horse meat, is indeed horse meat, or any other form. there is some to check if cow is cow and not horse, but horse is seen as less quality stuff and cheaper than cows so why check it?

and when it leaves the slaughterhouse and end up in cold storage you never know what gets out to the black market too. but after it is stored there is hardly any risk of nosy checking inspectors at all.

is it a reason to think maybe becoming vegetarian or vegan is better, do not stuart to think that, the veggies and stiff made from it are handled from the same minds, who produces the rules and regulations and do not like to pay for checking if what ends up to buy for your platter is what you think it is.

it is simply a story that starts with an owner of a horse that no longer wants or can keep it, and cannot find it in its capacity to use a sound working way. usually because it is not nice to do that, or more difficult. the rest is just a market that exists from it.

it never stopped, it is simply an overall system failure that is repaired too often with some stitches and glue, far too many different groups who want a share of it. one with profit only.

i just walked through the past, meaning my own database about food safety from the past, to see if there was after last week still some attention, as it seems the common media does not bother much about it.

a very useful site i revisited shows that the traditional horsemeat frauds are noted, every organisation had dropped some of their pie on it, as usual and by tradition too. and the story will grow silent again.

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2024/06/irish-investigation-uncovers-horse-traceability-issues/

but in the real world the lazyness in wanting to deal with it from where it starts will of course not be corrected, the only change to expect is that just another transport route to just another shady slaughterhouse wil be uses, meaning they have to get a bit busier for some time, because they are still there in use, as they always were and been. the 2013 meat scandal did change nothing.

a general european database, or even one for each european country is never happened, and goverments are fond to be not buoyed about the hassle, but do not want to see that there are eyes out on this problem, like many others, and as the parties, as in the former owners of the horses like to close their eyes too, nothing will change in this matter.

it is easy to tell you want to change things, usually that just results in making a bit of law, some extra paperwork and a massive, still paper printed report, with also a digital version, but hard to find.

so it is by tradition just 10 minutes of feeling shocked when reading the news, and it will be next story to be shocked.

horsemeat it certainly not the only treat to animal welfare, or high risk area in food safety.

and of course it is hard to break down a tradition, it asks to burn down the castles in the air, and smashing the mirrors of decadence and proud.

even when things are on paper are fully right, it usually is not, i am not against eating horse meat at all, not eating it means it still wil be eaten by pets, or used as a source of energy to heat your homes, or the factory that made dried your vegan beans.
horses do not live forever, horse can become no longer usable or fit to live on.
you can end their lives in the what it called humane way, but it is very hard to find a vet who will take that as the task. first because they do not become vets to kill animals, but make them better, secondly, it can be not even that easy, besides working with still large and potential dangerous animals, you get the emotional owners and carers on your plate too.

the use of toxic substances to kill a horse is also less humane as often thought. you are nowadays hardly be able to choose burial of the carcass, and with the used toxic substances it in not that friendly and risk free for other causes too.
shooting as means to kill a horse, with a bullet is difficult and not foolproof, the use of a bolt is exactly the same as what would be used in a slaughterhouse.

cremation can be a choice at least in the netherlands, but you end up with a wheelbarrow full of ashes and need fossil fuels to get it in that form. so that is not the most sustainable way too, and is only done because of sentimental reasons.
all other dead horses will be collected by a cadaver service, it can be also done in a way you have no longer to get the carcass near the road access nowadays, but still it is not a nice process, nor that clean.

at least through the cadaver service the carcass will be used to recycle the content.

but the law and rules around registration are very sloppy. the horse must have a passport and a micro chip in most cases, that is usually made from a political choice, the eu regulation under it did not say microchip only, but it said countries had to make a choice out some different ways of identification. but the passports can only be obtained by a licenced passport handling body, usually studbooks, or all other organisation that register horses already for sports, breeding, use or other.
they have to get some licenced chippers as we call them, or a vet must handle the chipping.

but there is no central register of the micro chips, each country must have a kind of their own database, but they do not have to be usable for all who want to check the information, for some you have to ask someone from the organisation to look manually if they have information about the horse that belongs to the number in the micro chip.

there never was the obligation to register yourself as the owner in the passport, you can do it, it is the wanted behaviour, but it can take weeks to months, and for most situations that is way to slow. the passport is legally not even a document to proof ownership at all. and it is not cheap to re-register and the last owner registered can not de-register it even.
because the passport is an obligation, passport producing organisations can earn money with it. many horses are not belonging to a studbook, or have a need to have their pedigree registered at all. so usually the passports have come from different registers, usually the one from the breeding database, or a member one for a sporting body, and a register all the rest.

many of the organisations even tried to pull you extra in the past, by telling you could only use their service when you payed at least a full year of membership. until found out that was not lawful and legal at all.

and the micro chips are not the most welfare friendly option at all, just as like everywhere around horses, some work neat and with care, others do not. not all horses are easy to let you put the quite thick needle in their necks, i had one of them, great horse but he hated all males with effort and vets he just hated them with even more effort and by all genders. vaccines i could handle by doing it myself under the eye of a vet. but the law on identification and registration of horses is not the only law, if you own a horse, you as a owner are always responsible for any damage it brings onto others. you can insure yourself for it, but only for unforeseen events, and if you know it simply will happen that your vet will get harmed in a process they will not pay out. so i also did know there is a exclusion possible for the chipping as we call it, by registering the dna of the horse.

but i just send a message to the government, pick and choose, or you give me exclusion, or send your own vet and exclude me from my responsibility, the result could not be stranger, in one week time i was noted with a very strange solution, i am still by the way officially declared as conscientious objector, what is pretty strange because i had nothing against chipping my horse, but it also had a result that i could no longer chip any other horse born in my stables. you usually have to have some religion or other strange living ideas to become a conscientious objector.

it proved only that the law was not fit for simple practical problems. and the complete i&r law and regulation is not. so officially the passport belongs to the horse, and has to be near the horse. but as it is a document the people know needed to sell a horse, when you stable your horse somewhere that are not always the ideal circumstances to keep important documents safe.
it is quite a big booklet, it does not fit in most pockets, so it is not needed to be with the horse when you walk beside it or have it under saddle or in harness, but if the horse is in a vehicle it must be with the person who is with the horse.

to be checked if it ever happens by someone who has no idea about horses. and if they accidentally do, they cannot use their knowledge, because they do it in places that loading the horse of a vehicle is not safe to risk that.
importing a horse is something you have to tell the government first. there are little border patrols nowadays and many ways around it. and a micro chip reader needed to check the numbers is not standard there.

but the big problem is that the i&r for horses are not made for the living horse itself so much, but first for food safety, it is a going on sage from 2009 on warts. earlier approaches had been repaired before that.

now we have new, well new, for 2 years the obligation to register where a specific horse is, with a lot of exceptions. and it is up to you how to you keep registers of that, and you have to do mutations online too. about twice a years it get in the news they will come and check, by random sampling of course. we have no idea how it is done in other countries, but it is a regulation to be of use when any bad disease would walk in. but not even half of the horse owners knows of it, and the system is as always often completely daft to make use off.

but think about it, all these horrific medication can often already have a need of use well before a horse even has a microchip and passport, the chipping is usually in time, but before you get the passports it can take many months. so there is all the time no passport to declare anything, and no rule to keep it in a file and declare later. so it is actually the speed of the office worker that can make the difference between the same substance used in one young horse and another. the first who still has to wait until the passport is in the mail get a fit for human consumption, the other one will be excluded for life.

there is absolutely no testing on the slaughter lines, but the horse that has to get the substance use noted in the passport at say 6 months of age, can live well into its twenties and still can never be used for human consumption.

it is a complete disaster and not working system, to easy to find a sloppy figure who looks not that neatly when a passport is asked for, not all are correctly putting in the passport or the database the horse is not fit for human consumption, it was already a bit of a repair because before if difficult substances, or an not fit for human consumption form in the passport was filled out, you just asked and paid for a fresh one. so nowadays all that is registered after the 9th month after birth, or is in need of replacement passports is automatically excluded from being fit for human consumption.

and again the 2024 re-attention on the still ongoing horsemeat scandal will again change nothing substantial. on paper it all works well, and that is what does count nowadays.

also the common horse owner has nothing to gain from the registration and identification system, you must have it, so pay to get it, but it is not even official enough to declare you as the owner. you cannot officially keep it safe in a safe. you cannot even choose a welcome option for many, by just filling out the form in the passport with the vet for the extra signature to exclude your own horse from fit for human consumption. what was a nice one, because your horse will no longer be seen as food and feed, but as a pet, and that makes the needed medical care much easier. no longer have to register odd things used, and keep print outs too with it.

of course the horsey people will simply use early on a kind of medication, and let register that by the vet, so that effect will be the same. now they only have to learn how to take care of the last day of their horses, instead of selling them as riding school professor, company horse for another one in a field or stable, others who promise to take care for them for free. or just grab that few euros in the pocket for the old nag.

there is no new scandal, just one line found out, the others will keep on going, these will start over again.

and it is very strange, because masses declare not to want or dare to eat horse meat, there are even low numbers in the official declaration of slaughtered horses in the netherlands. horsemeat is known as second best quality in meats.
it is hardly ever in a declaration of ingredients on human food and animal feed too.

it is known to have a much lower price over beef and even most pork.

so that together makes it hard to see how it will have a profit by hauling all kinds of horses from the uk and ireland, pay for the still needed veterinary check and the transport and ferries or chunnel, the passports and chip are not for free. and the concurrence is cheap horse meat usually from south america, argentina is known for it, and canada, both use also horses from the usa. but they come in boxes and well frozen.

but how the heck can there be a profit in these enterprises?

the irish approach by just closing the last slaughterhouse with a licence for horses is stupid. all that is needed is eyes on the process, and with already dead horses, who cares how they are transported. closing the last opportunity that would better welfare at all.
an obligation to no longer ship or transport any animal for slaughter over a reasonable inland distance, but never when a border is crossed could handle that much better. it also would weed out the sad middle ages horseladies that buy to save such horses, that simply are not sound or cheap in the care they need. who often land simply just a bit later on another horrible transport.

and as always it is easily said that the dutch are not fond of horsemeat at all. because that is handled differently than by our own choice, first it is hardly on the shelf in any shop, some only in tins, or other products where it stays well hidden, at least be no longer recognisable or to taste. if you get your grub in the snackbar, as our chip shops are called, they do not tell you, you get very often horsemeat. it is a standard joke, that usually is very real. and there is smoked horse meat, in very thin slices, that is to find in the refrigerated shelves in shops in the section meat for sandwiches.

in 2023 2300 horses of all kinds, are officially slaughtered in the netherlands, this is not specified in where the meat ends up, it ended up in 524.000 kg. of horsemeat.
and there are about a handful horse slaughterhouses still working, most not even the full week available for horses.
many horses that end up as horse meat end up outside of the netherlands. the last numbers i can find about inland consumption per head in the netherlands is from 2017 and estimated on a 100 grams each year.

i can agree that welfare starts with registration and being able to identify each animal, but it would be nice if it was just one european system, for all uses there can be made of horses, also only transport to slaughter directly from the last address to a slaughterhouse, transport of living animals over distance seems also the most impractical way to work.

but what is more important above anything else, is not only law that plays a paper tiger or just plays out a fairy tale, law and rules need eyes with expertise and without that, why make them. people have no inborn want to bravely follow the rules at all, and even less when they do not like a rule or have no profit from it, or worse have to pay for it.

But what right exactly do humans have to take possession of all the products of nature and evolution? Both being natural phenomena rightfully placed on planet earth to play their own individual part in the process of life on earth.

The horse, nor any other species on earth does not belong to human beings! What makes the human mind so superior as to think it has rights, control, over all?

Left in the very capable hands of nature, all of earth's species play a part in the process of life on earth and evolution - that part does not include, or shouldn't include, human intervention. Why do humans think themselves so special they have the inbuilt wherewithal to govern all earth's species, not only earth's species but the planet itself. Learn by all means but that doesn't give the automatic right to govern, we are but observers of what life on earth has to offer not owners nor governors.

Horses are very popular because they are a status symbol to many and they command big money when alive, nuisance is of course when they die thus no longer valuable. Not so easy to dispose of such a big body so the populace lose interest in their once prized possession.

Left to natural processes whatever your form you are born, you live to play your part in the earth's rich cycle and then you die. Remains of which are reprocessed by nature to enrich the lands.

Why do human beings think themselves so superior they can outrun the most natural sources of life on earth, why do they think they know better than the superiority of life on earth?

Face it, every obstacle faced by humans is man-made - the product of their own greed and dominance.

Do this, don't do that, look before you leap, live as I say not as you will, die as I say not as you will. Do as you're told or else!

What right do they think they have over all else?