CPR has received animal welfare incident reports from Meramist slaughterhouse in Caboolture QLD through a Right to Information inquiry made by Meet Our Horse Meat. Whilst we recognise the obscurity in (unintentionally) implying a place that exists to kill horses and other animals somehow has their welfare as a consideration, these stories give a snapshot into their lives before being sent to the slaughterhouse, during transport and/or on arrival.
Help horses by:
1. Demanding the National Horse Traceability Register be designed to achieve its intended purpose 
https://horseracingkills.com/nhtr/
2. Signing the petition directed at the EU Commission to end their import of Australian horse meat https://bit.ly/2LWvb1m
3. Watch and share ‘The Final Race’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp-ALoBRW20
Incident 7/5/2019 (no incident number).
The Meramist On-Plant Vet was performing an ante-mortem exam on the horses due for slaughter that day. At 6.50am they discovered a brown gelding who was blind in both eyes in a pen with 35 other horses. All horses had been delivered the previous morning. The vet noticed he had his head down and extensive swelling involving soft tissue around the right eye. The surface of his left eye was cloudy with no menace response indicating blindness in that eye. The right eye was subsequently checked with the peri-orbital swelling being at least 24 hours old. Again, no menace response and bi lateral blindness was confirmed when the gelding was noticed walking into the perimeter fence of the yard. The vet declared the horse ‘unfit to load’.
Another staff member agreed he was blind and led him up the race for “priority slaughter”.
The gelding was reported to be a thoroughbred type and 20+ years old. He had a body score of 3/5 and was depressed and lethargic.
The truck the gelding arrived in carried 35 other horses over two trailers.
His eyes were extracted after slaughter and locked securely in DAWR freezer.
There were eight photos accompanying the report which the Queensland Government did not provide.
Previous incidents from the same horse trader:
16/4/2019 – horse with open dislocation of left hind fetlock on truck
3/1/2018 – three horses down in truck, one fractured skull, one broken leg, one dead.
26/9/2017 – use of cattle prod on brumbies while unloading.
There are other incidents at Meramist that we are aware of from this same horse trader that are not mentioned in the above summary.
It is highly likely the brown gelding was the stock horse pictured – sold at Echuca sales 11 days prior to the same person who delivered this and thirty-five other horses to Meramist. He was advertised as “quiet in the yard and blind in one eye”.
The vet said the horse had extensive swelling around the right eye and that it was at least 24 hours old so why wasn’t this picked up the day before and the horse euthanased then? He was blind in a pen (and likely in a cramped truck) with 35 other horses and entirely at their mercy.
There are so many related incidents to this vendor, yet he was allowed to continue supplying horses to Meramist.
Whilst over 50% of horses killed at Meramist are racehorses (as our 2019 investigation exposed), many of the horses in these incident reports that we will be sharing with you over the coming months are not. Even so, we feel a deep responsibility to tell their stories, to keep exposing the devastating reality of a world that trades in horses (and so many other animals) as objects for our use as we see fit. In these cases- it is the end of the line, when all other uses have been exhausted. The last remaining thing to exploit them for is their very own flesh, to be served up as a meal for humans in Europe and Asia.
To keep across future Meramist story posts on social media search #MeramistStories #UrgentNationalRegister
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