Horse slaughter is one of the reasons for horse theft in our country. Recently stolen horses are sold to be used in carriages, and the ones that are not useful for carrying are sold to copers. They forge permissions and hide stolen animals, taking them to terrifying death, providing exportations to Europe.
Argentina, curiously, does not have horse breeding for slaughter and, at the same time, is one of the biggest horse meat exporters.
Breeding horses for slaughtering is not profitable because of the long time it takes the horses to grow and to reach a useful weight and because of the costs of daily feed and maintenance. So, how does the slaughterhouses owner fit the fee? Part of the horses that go to slaughter is legally bought in auctions and fairs; they are old, hurt and discarded animals, from haras and sports. They also come from “blood farms”, where they draw blood from pregnant mares in order to get an expensive fertility hormone called PMSG (eCG).
These horses records are used to whitewash the stolen ones.
Considering that most of these horses have received medications (what makes its meat not able to be eaten by humans), monitoring should be made by authorities, but it is not. This occurs in slaughterhouses, both legal and illegal; these ones mix horse meat in cheaper cold cuts to be sold in poor areas.