FOALS RIPPED FROM MARES

Unfortunately, heartbreaking scenes like these mares being separated from foals play out at auctions across Australia on a regular basis.

Let’s start with a little background of what happens in countries like Australia where it is legal for horses to be slaughtered for human consumption or pet food or their skins.

Sadly, the racing industry, breeders including “backyard” breeders, the rodeo industry and others dump their unwanted horses at auctions.

As you’ll see in the video, contrary to popular belief that only old or broken-down horses end up in the hands of those who buy horses to supply horse slaughter businesses like abattoirs and knackeries, horses of all types and ages including young and perfectly sound horses end up at auctions and in the hands of doggers also known as “meat men” or kill buyers.

Yes, even baby horses.

As of late 2024 it appears that the one business that was slaughtering horses in Australia for human consumption is at this time not accepting horses for slaughter. However, slaughtering horses for pet food is sadly thriving with multiple knackeries spread across Australia.

MOHM will continue to advocate for the welfare of horses until horse slaughter in Australia for any purpose is banned.

We are not sure we’ll ever know the full story behind the mares and foals in the video.

The auctioneer claimed that at least some of the 5 foals seen with 2 mares were adopted by the mares after the foals’ mothers were killed in a fire.

Good marketing or the truth?  Again, we’ll likely never know.

But as anyone can see the mares and foals had a strong bond and when it came time to drive the mares away from the foals, as you’ll hear one person exclaim, the mares did not want to abandon the babies.

Thankfully, in this case, the foals were purchased by kind-hearted individuals BUT the mares were purchased by a dogger to be jammed in leg-breaking trucks and hauled to be slaughtered for their meat.

Here’s where even those who advocate for the banning of horse slaughter often disagree with each other…

There are those who look at all the horses that can be purchased for a song before they are scooped up by “meat men” – those who work hard to outbid the kill buyers AKA doggers at auctions and generally, they refuse to buy any horses from doggers at inflated prices because they feel that by helping doggers quickly profit it enables doggers to take those profits and buy even more horses to haul to slaughter.

A horse advocacy group in Canada that we know of splits the difference.  They will outbid kill buyers at auctions and they will buy horses directly from kill buyers but they ONLY offer the same price that the slaughterhouse offers those killbuyers.

Their feeling is that when kill buyers sell to the slaughterhouse they profit and yes that means that the meat men can turn around and buy more horses – but they are NOT going to help them increase those profits by paying more than kill buyers would get from the slaughterhouse.

In a perfect world, no one would sell horses at an auction – certainly not without a substantial reserve, a reserve far greater than a “meat man” would pay.

Wouldn’t it be far better if those selling horses carefully screened the homes each were to go to, if references were asked for so that meat men couldn’t get away with masquerading as those wanting to buy horses for purposes other than slaughter?

And yes, that happens frequently.  Kill buyers, meat men, doggers pretend to be other than they are.

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