Australian Racehorses are Being Slaughtered for Meat in South Korea

Over the course of the past five years, Australia has exported 158 thoroughbred racehorses to South Korea. The animals—which are not classified as livestock in Australia—are primarily sold off for the purposes of racing and breeding, and so aren’t protected by the laws that govern the live export industry. In reality, many of them are being sent to the slaughterhouse.

A recent report by The Guardian revealed that at least 12 of the 58 horses sent to Korea in 2014 were confirmed to have been killed for meat. Eleven more were likely to have been used in the country’s meat trade. The Guardian reports that thousands of thoroughbreds from around the world have been butchered in South Korean slaughterhouses—many of them subjected to treatment the RSPCA has described as “very distressing”. And among the victims is the half-brother of Australian racing legend Winx.

According to his final entry in the Korean studbook, Winx’s half-brother Bareul Jeong received “death for meat processing” on July 1st, 2015. That was the same date that the Korean Racing Authority (KRA) carried out a 40-year-long audit of racehorses sent to slaughter—but since Bareul Jeong's last veterinary treatment for a strained ligament was carried out in 2010, the thoroughbred’s real date of death is likely to have been much earlier. He was exported to South Korea in 2008, three years before Winx was born.

Two other Australian racehorses—a chestnut gelding named Dynamic Tank, who raced for three years after being exported as a two-year-old in 2014, and a four-year-old gelding named Road to Warrior—were also confirmed to have been slaughtered at South Korea’s Nonghyup abattoir, courtesy of secretly-shot video from April, May, and November 2018. The video shows horses being bashed on the head with lengths of black pipe in order to herd them into the facility, according to The Guardian, where they are eventually corralled into a “kill box” and stunned with a captive bolt device.

On two occasions, a pair of horses were herded toward the kill box together, meaning that the second animal witnessed the first being killed in line in front of them. This constitutes a breach of Korean animal welfare laws, and has recently become the subject of investigation by police.

Certain other animal welfare laws that would protect horses in places like Australia, however, don’t count for much at Nonghyup. Because the thoroughbreds were exported to race or breed, rather than for slaughter, they were not part of the formal Australian supply chain and fell outside the protection of live export industry laws.

One subset of these laws is known as the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS), which requires exporters to have “commercial arrangements with supply chain partners in importing countries to provide humane treatment and handling of livestock from arrival in the importing country up to the point of slaughter.” Dr Bidda Jones, the RSPCA’s chief scientist, told The Guardian that the treatment of the horses at Nonghyup wouldn’t cut it in that respect.

“It [Nonghyup] would not meet ESCAS standards for cattle,” Dr Jones said. “That facility would not meet supply chain requirements. It would not pass an animal welfare audit.

Speaking of the disturbing footage that was captured at the abattoir, she added: “no horse deserves to be treated that way. Regardless of whether it was bred to be eaten or bred to race, no horse should be treated that way.”

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