Ag Dept releases photos/video of hideous cruelty at horse-butchering plant in Texas

Due to a Freedom of Information Act request to the US Department of Agriculture, the animal-welfare organization Animals’ Angels received around 500 photos, and a video, showing nauseating cruelty at the Beltex Corporation’s horse-slaughter facility in Texas. That abattoir has since closed, but Beltex still operates a slaughterhouse in Mexico and a “slaughter horse feedlot” in Texas where horses are kept until being sent to Mexico.

The photos, video, and accompanying documents are posted at this page. No images are displayed on the page;

However, if you want to risk vomiting and nightmares, this page displays some of the photos.

You can also read the PDF press release from Animals’ Angels, the group that filed the FOIA request. Note that the press release contains several sickening photos. Below is the text of the press release, minus the images.

Press Release
November 2008
Animals’ Angels
phone: 410-848-3153
fax: 410-848-0213
www.animals-angels.com

Animals’ Angels, an animal welfare organization
based in Maryland, last week received over 900
pages of documents and photographs from the
United States Department of Agriculture taken
during part of 2005 at the Beltex horse
slaughter plant in Texas. Documents received 36
months after making a Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) request, reveal an appalling number
of incidences and an equally appalling degree of
suffering sustained by horses. Evidence
indicates alarming cruelty corresponding
directly to horse slaughter.

The large FOIA document contains hundreds of
photographs that graphically depict horses with
open fractures, legs missing, battered and
bloody faces, eyeballs dangling and
what appears to be horses left to bleed to
death. The document provides unimpeachable
evidence for the immediate ban on the
slaughter of American horses.

The photographs included in the FOIA document
were taken between January 17, 2005 and
November 17, 2005 at Beltex, the Belgian
owned plant in Fort Worth, Texas. Beltex was
forced to close this plant in 2007, after courts
upheld Texas law that has banned horse
slaughter since 1949. Beltex has since focused
on its operations in Fresnillo, Mexico where it

continues to slaughter American horses. In addition, Beltex still runs the second largest slaughter
horse feedlot in the U.S. Horses from all over the country are tranported to the feedlot in Morton,TX
before being sent to the Beltex slaughter plant in Mexico.
The FOIA request was submitted by Animals’ Angels investigator Julie Caramante in November 2005
“I’ve been an equine cruelty investigator for a number of years,” said Caramante, “and I’ve witnessed
many horrific incidents of animal cruelty. But nothing could prepare me for the images contained in
the FOIA. These pictures shocked me to the core. The pain and terror these horses endured is
criminal. This just should not be, no excuses.”
In commenting on the photographs, Sonja Meadows, Executive Director of Animals’ Angels USA said:
“The pro-horse slaughter lobby continues to lobby for the domestic slaughter of horses, railing
that transportation and slaughter of horses inside the United States is ever so much better, so much
more humane than what happens in Mexico. These people say that U.S. humane laws protect the
horses, that Mexico has no such laws. But this rhetoric is now exposed as nothing but disingenuous
talk. The FOIA reveals unimaginable suffering was being perpetuated upon large numbers of horses on
a long-term basis here in the U.S. We can only shudder at the scale of the suffering over the years.
Animals’ Angels will be investigating what actions were taken against those responsible for this horrific
abuse.”
Meadows is firm in her support of a Federal ban of horse slaughter. “From our own weekly
investigations at auctions, feedlots and slaughter plants, the barbaric and inhumane treatment of
horses goes on and will continue to do so until a Federal law is passed to end once and for all, the
transportation and slaughter of horses for human consumption. The horse has played such an
important part in the history of the United States and continues to be such an integral part in the lives
of millions of its citizens. It is well overdue, past time for Congress to act and to pass a law to bring
this miserable trade in horses for human consumption to an end.”

Animals’ Angels continues to send out its
investigators to expose the abuse and suffering of
horses and to ensure that those responsible within
this brutal industry are held accountable for their
actions. “However difficult and traumatic these
investigations are,” said Meadows, “Animals’ Angels
will remain true to its motto – ‘We are there with
the animals’”

Notes to Editors:
1. In 2007, the slaughter of horses on US soil came
to an end when a court ruling upheld a Texas law
banning horse slaughter, and similar legislation was passed in Illinois.
However, failure by the US Senate to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act into law has
resulted in American horses still being slaughtered for human consumption abroad. Tens of thousands
are shipped to Mexico and Canada annually, where they are killed under inhumane conditions so their
meat can be sent to markets in Belgium, France, Italy and Japan.
Additionally, without the federal law, there remains the threat of horse slaughter plants being
established in states that have no laws against the practice. In the beginning of 2008, unsuccessful
attempts were made to open a horse slaughter plant in South Dakota. It is likely that pro-horse
slaughter organizations will try again elsewhere in the United States.
While a handful of horses are purposely sold into slaughter by irresponsible owners, most arrive at the
slaughter plant via livestock auction, where unsuspecting owners sell the animals to slaughter
plant middlemen known as “killer buyers”. Despite the fact that the US plants are no longer in
operation, killer buyers continue to purchase and haul as many horses as possible from livestock
auctions around the country to the slaughterhouses that have now relocated to Mexico and Canada.

On the 24th July 2008, the Prevention of Equines
Cruelty Act of 2008 (H.R. 6598) was introduced to
the 110th Congress by Rep. John Conyers and
Representative Dan Burton. H.R. 6598 prohibits
the slaughter of horses for human consumption in
the United States and the export of slaughter
horses to Canada and Mexico.
2. Animals’ Angels is a 501 (c)(3) non profit
organization incorporated in Maryland with fulltime
investigators working in the United States and
Canada. Our focus is on improving conditions for
farm animals. We work primarily in the field,
trailing livestock trucks on highways, visiting
markets, collecting stations and slaughterhouses.
We seek to cooperate with auction managers, transport companies and other authorities, including the
police, veterinarians and the United States Department of Agriculture.
Contact:
Sonja Meadows
Executive Director
Animals’ Angels USA
410-848-3153
www.animals-angels.com
Further information, video and pictures can be found here: