Shocking images from Spain: this is how horses become cannon fodder

Animal Equality disseminates the video investigation and denounces the torture suffered by the animals before and after their slaughter, before arriving in Italy. "We are the European country where the most horse meat is eaten"

ROME – A shot to the head and the horse leading him collapses to the ground. All he has left is a last desperate and equally futile attempt to escape, as he turns and runs away from the slaughter area. It is unfortunately a common scene in horse slaughterhouses. The investigation by Animal Equality today releases these and all the images collected together with the photojournalist Aitor Garmendia inside a horse slaughterhouse in Spain . Cruel and bloody scenes that make it clear how these animals, before and after slaughter, are subjected to real violence and torture. And all this happens in nearby Spain, which is the largest producer of horsemeat in the European Union and exports it above all to Italy, where horsemeat consumption is the highest in Europe.

The investigative team of Animal Equality, an international organization for the protection of animals bred for food, carried out the investigation between November 2023 and May 2024. The images of a video demonstrate how the equines are lined up to enter the slaughter area: one after the other they are thus forced to witness the massacre of their comrades, which increases their anguish and fear. Then the scene of the desperate horse, after the animal in front of him has been slaughtered: he turns and leaves the slaughter area, demonstrating the profound survival instinct that drives these animals to flee from death. And again: Animal Equality shows how the horses inside the Spanish slaughterhouse are pushed towards the slaughter area by an operator who beats them with a stick. If that were not enough, it is evident “the prolonged suffering of these animals due to failure to stun during slaughter – animal rights activists explain – Since some horses are not stunned correctly, they remain fully conscious while they are slaughtered and bleed to death”.

And if Spain is the largest producer of horsemeat in the EU, Italy is no joke either: every year, in Italy alone, over 25,000 horses are killed in slaughterhouses. Thousands of them every year are imported from Spain itself and make the journey of death, headed to Italian slaughterhouses, locked in trucks and transported long distances, “forced to spend hours in overcrowded spaces, suffering injuries, often developing fever transport – reports the association – weight loss, tiredness and dehydration”.

Animal Equality has been denouncing for years the abuses suffered by horses before and during slaughter, as well as the clandestine trade in horse meat from horse races, which is not suitable for food consumption due to veterinary drugs that these animals may have received while alive and which are not suitable for human consumption. Now it goes even deeper: “Our new investigation sheds light on a brutal and widespread slaughter system throughout the world whose victims are sentient beings considered by many, in Italy and beyond, to be companion animals – clarifies Matteo Cupi, vice-president of Animal Equality Europa – Yet, as we have reported, even in our country the control system is not sufficient to guarantee the protection of horses killed for food”.

Over 180 thousand citizens have already signed the petition that Animal Equality has addressed to the Italian Government to ask to ban the slaughter of horses in our country too. The organization’s request is to recognize the status of “pet animal” also for equids, as happened in 2020 in Greece, where the slaughter of horses was prohibited and it was prohibited, as for dogs and cats, to breed them, use them and export them for the production of fur, leather, meat or other substances.

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Dire.it has chosen not to spread the images of the violence suffered by animals because they are particularly bloody.