Arrival at Meramist

Horses arrive at Meramist the day before they are to be killed.

They are inspected by the stock person as they unload, who looks for injuries and horses that are unfit to load. There are many incidents of horses that have arrived injured or should not have been loaded.

These incidents are reported to the On Plant Vet (OPV) who documents the injuries and decides if the horse is to be euthanased on the spot.

If the horses have been transported a long distance, they are given water.

Some horses arrive at Meramist after a 30+ hour journey.

They are not fed and have to wait a further 10 or more hours until they reach the slaughter floor.

For horses, this is a horrendous amount of time to go without food. Horses are grazers and trickle feeders who need food in their stomachs constantly.

Homeostasis relies upon a constant supply of roughage entering the stomach, as acid is always trickling into it.

Without food, this acid builds up, which burns their stomach lining. It is dreadful animal cruelty.

It’s not hard to imagine how thirsty and starving for roughage these horses would be when they arrive.

Maybe like other animals, the abattoir wants their guts empty when they go to slaughter so employees don’t have to clean up the mess and have it contaminate the meat.

The stockman is responsible for moving the horses through a maze of holding pens.

See the treatment of confused and scared horses by Meramist employee Nicholas Jahrmann here making sure their final moments are filled with absolute terror.

Knock box

This is where the horse is stunned by the captive bolt.

The slaughter man stands on the platform so he is above the box and the horse.

Captive bolt

There are 2 types of captive bolts.

The one used here is a penetrative captive bolt that shoots a metal prod into the horse’s head causing massive trauma to the brain. If the horse is fortunate, it will cause unconsciousness.

If not, it will experience unbearable, extreme pain.

This horse was bolted 5 times.

That means that he was conscious and felt that metal prod enter his head 5 times.

The horse was writhing in agony as the worker was reloading the captive bolt over and over again.

Apart from this barbarity, we can also see issues with Work Health and Safety, as the slaughter man has to lean down to strike the horse again and again. You can see the footage of this in Victims of the betting industry.

The following screenshots are also from the same film.

Over the 10 days of covert footage, there were 65 horses writhing in agony requiring more than one bolt to stun them.

Sticking, Hanging and Bleeding Out

After sliding out of the knock box, the horse has her throat cut.

This needs to be done before the horse regains consciousness.

However, covert footage showed horses that were inadequately stunned and still conscious while having their throats sliced open and hung up to bleed out.

Stills are from One Year On by HorseRacingKills.

Footage from The Final Race showed that horses could see what was happening to the horse ahead of them.

Here is a horse seeing the horse in front of him hoisted up by the back leg and bleeding out, while he waits for his turn and knows what is about to happen.

There is no justification for this cruel treatment.