A voir ce soir à TVA, la face cachée de la viande ! Le but du documentaire n’est pas de faire la morale aux Québécois en disant qu’ils consomment trop de viande, par exemple, a expliqué Sophie Durocher. L’objectif est de présenter la réali
té telle qu’elle est et de montrer comment ça se passe au Québec, comment les animaux sont élevés et abattus, illustrer l’impact sur l’environnement, et donner la parole à des médecins qui ont consulté de nombreuses études et à des gens qui ont fait le choix d’être végétariens et qui s’en portent très bien. »

As for comments about the Ile D’Orleans situation, please remember that until charges are actually laid (if they are), nothing will appear on this blog which may incriminate the person in question.  Character assassination is not part of my horse advocacy, as it leads nowhere but to a courtroom.  Louise is one of our earth angels, working for horses.  Let’s not get in her way, but rather help her as judiciously as we can.

http://canadianhorsedefencecoalition.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/canadian-slaughterhouse-firm-no-longer-accepting-thoroughbreds/#comments

I was astonished to discover recently that horsemen who practise Natural Horsemanship, of whatever origin, also support horse-driven caleches in cities as big as Montreal (3 million), a city so swelteringly hot and humid in the summertime that young children and the elderly keep indoors for health reasons.   Let me backtrack.  As I understand NH techniques as applied to equines, the premise is that the horse is a prey animal, subject to flight responses (including panic) when confronted by smells, noises, objects, or environments he is unfamiliar with.  And the goal of the NH trainer/owner is to induce trust and a sense of safety in the horse by showing him that wherever you lead him or whatever you put in his tracks, you will protect him; that you are a leader intent on his safety from harm, and would not ask him to do anything dangerous to his survival.  (Do correct me if I’m wrong.  I have read Henry Blake, Buck Brannaman, and Monty Roberts’ works, not Tom Dorrance’s nor Ray Hunt’s.)

Now let’s imagine a typical cityscape where there’s anything from jackhammers to cranes to crazy drivers (or pedestrians or pedestrian party groups or cyclists or motorcyclists) to demolition sites to cars backfiring to screaming crowds of protesters to unleashed or barking dogs to ear-splitting music to car exhausts…well, you get the picture.  Let’s add pavement, whether asphalt, stone-gravel fill, corrugated cement or cobblestone, which comprise the daily ground that the working caleche horse trods on.

We have high-tech pollution indexes which alert us to the levels of pollution in our cities, so a mammal with a a sense of smell ten times keener than ours is doing his work in a continuously polluted air environment…not to mention that if his local trajectory is undergoing construction (and there is always construction going on in downtown Montreal), the dust, cement/brick particles, clouds of smoke, etcetera–all are involuntarily inhaled as he trucks along.

Then there’s the dirt, or rather, in some cases, the filth.  I lived in downtown Montreal for nearly 12 years, from Sherbrooke and Papineau Streets to Sherbrooke and Park Row East to St. Laurent near the Plateau on Laval street (and those are just three of my neighbourhoods).  Everywhere I lived downtown, the residents would drag mattresses onto a porch (if they had one), a balcony or even the patch of grass they called a lawn because of the unbreathable humidity in the summer.  Some would carry out their 21-inch TV sets with a two-four of beer onto the porch, and they’d be settled for the night.  Nevertheless, the night-time brought no relief.

So what I’d like to know is, how would an NH trainer prepare a horse for big city carriage-driving?  I mean, even a person can be startled walking along St. Catherine or the Old Port by a sudden boom or the blast of a car horn–and we usually know what is making that sound which abates that first rush of adrenaline.  Does a horse, do you think?  A walk in any big city is a step-by-step adventure.  Imagine what it is for a prey animal.

Griffintown in Montreal where the Horse Palace is, is a place, if you’ve ever been there, which is no place for any animal. It may have been at one time, like in the late 1880′s or early 20th century before the motorcar became ubiquitous (see the links below).  It is no longer.  True, my personal experience is somewhat dated, but according to the Anti-Caleche Defense Coalition the stables in which caleche horses are kept are decrepit, and certainly nothing like the pretty stables you keep your horses in.  And let’s not compare the Montreal Cavalry horses.  These horses undergo stringent training, and are only brought out when necessary, and not for long periods of time, and are retired young…something a caleche horse can only dream about.

Three years ago, I agreed to ride in a horse-drawn carriage in Charlottetown, PEI.  Bill and Ted, two big black Belgians, were our hosts.  Needless to say, when I saw them standing in front of the Charlottetown Tourist Centre, I was at first aghast.  I immediately plied the owner with a dozen questions, even as I furtively checked out the horses’ state, eyes wide open and hands-on.  They were in better shape than I was.

Bill and Ted were virtually unionized.  They only worked four hours a day; they lived twenty minutes away in the country (and if you’ve been to PEI, you know that’s easily true); they never worked in overheated temperatures.  The entire time, as the owner/tour guide pointed out the sights, I observed the horses, I watched the quality of her carriage-driving (a feather at the end of her stick), amazing foresight into the ignorance of motorists, and, was relieved to notice the city’s cleanliness and, apart from cars, the absence of unsettling noises.  (The owner made sure to get a heads-up everyday from the city as to where any construction work was going on.)  All her retired horses live with her in the country…all of them.

What horses need, as a species, is to be among a herd (even with another horse); to be free to forage and graze (preferably grass, hay is not their natural food); to feel the ground made of grass or dirt under their super-sensitive hooves; to be free to run and kick up when they feel like it; to be able to use their near-panoramic vision (caleche horses all wear blinders. The argument that the blinders are so that they will not fear what they cannot see seriously denigrates the wide scope of this species’ senses–all their senses.)

Domesticated horses are curious, intelligent, wary, playful, social and biddable animals when, at the very least, their needs as a species are met.  How can any of these needs be met in a noisy, filthy, polluted, congested environment, day in and day out, and how is the art of carriage-driving enhanced as a sport by this arcane and cruel practice?

Where is the stimulation modern horsemen claim is essential to encouraging a horse to enjoy his work–the stimulation a horse may find in jumping, eventing, trail riding, racing, cow-cutting–where would he find that in the confines of a smelly, debauched cityscape?  Does throwing a big, bouncy ball around in pasture compare to the terrors that assail a caleche horse every single day of his life?  Terrors that he eventually begins to ignore because he becomes depressed, hopeless and uncaring as to his own survival?

I ask you:  how does such a life, in such a place, with such daily unpredictable terrors constitute “work” for a horse, or any equine for that matter?

The caleche horses I have met, I met at Refuge RR.  I still have a huge portrait of Sam, saved by RR from slaughter, hanging in one of my bedrooms.  His ribs stick out in the portrait, taken just after his rescue.  Ginger, Sharlot and others, rescued by RR, were, after three decades of unrelenting misery on the streets of Montreal, on their way to slaughter…horses who hadn’t seen grass for decades.  Why not?  Why hadn’t they seen grass?  Where were they kept when not working the streets?  What does that, alone, tell us?

I have opened this discussion because of questions posed by Chamie Andorette of Refuge Galahad.  On the one hand, I applaud Chamie for trying to find out the true living conditions of caleche horses in Montreal; on the other, I question the owner and founder of a horse refuge who doesn’t already know the plight of the horses she rescues.  Galahad does fine work.  Yet, the learning process seems to take an improbably long time for someone who opened a horse refuge, out of horse love no doubt, yet with no real knowledge of the many and various crosses horses have to bear in a culture which is schizophrenic, both in its idolatry of the equine and in promoting its decline.

But at least, Chamie is asking all the right questions.  That is more than some who posted on her FB with one-line curses.  You’re not helping.  Chamie represents, to some extent, everyone out there who wants to know:  ”what is wrong with having caleche horses?” and every time that question is answered with an expletive, we lose support.  People need to know the truth, and answering in rage puts one more already hopeless caleche horse into the slaughterhouse.  Use your head in your answers, not your heart.

Chamie posted an article which tries to say that Quebec a Cheval has regulated this exploitative practice, yet at the same time quotes one of their own spokespeople as saying that there is much laxity and flaying of the regulations….

It doesn’t matter.  Montreal is not Charlottetown.  It’s a big asphalt jungle…no place for horses.  It is just wrong.  Below are some links from Horses Without Carriages.

I don’t get it.  There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, celebrating Natural Horsemanship methods which purport to “partner” with the horse as far in his natural state that domestication purposes allow, and on the other, promoting a practice using horses in such a way that not even one essential need of theirs is met.

It’s always true that the minute one uses an animal–whether it be in a dog/cockfight, dog/cat show, horse breeding operation–to make one’s living, a moral dilemma comes into play.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=c89111ad-df61-48fc-ab54-9a2538490f91&k=80064(2007)

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=5abceb3e-85ee-4612-bc0b-fb448120f8e6 (2008)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/Cruelty+horses/3967835/story.html (2010)

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120428/mtl_horse_120428/20120428/?hub=MontrealHome

There will be another anti-caleche demonstration in Montreal on June 2nd.  Go to their link for more info.  And, as for what I asked earlier, about correcting me if I’m wrong…I didn’t mean it.  I’m not wrong…and neither Dorrance nor Hunt nor any NH trainer can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  Horses do not belong in cities, not for profit, not for pleasure, not for tourists.  End of story.

Good day Cynthia just received an email response from Dr.Brian Evans of CFIA in response to an email I had sent him. His response is dated April 5th, 2012 and here is a quote  “it is not factual that horses can be slaughtered at any slaughterhouse in Canada. Any facility wishing to slaughter horses for export to other countries or for interprovincial trade of horsemeat is required to be federally registered with the CFIA. As with all meat products sold in Canada and exported to foreign markets,horsemeat must be properly segregated from meat of any other species of animal.”
Obviously Dr. Evans is unaware of the elimination of section 33 out of the regulations! Just thought you would find this of interest.

Now I’m pretty sure that I didn’t hallucinate the repealing of Section 33 that I read about in the Canada Gazette, and if I did, it must have been a long-lasting delusion because I blogged about it twice.  I told Theresa Anne that I would write more shortly (meaning, I’d go check my facts and get back to her), but I didn’t think it would be this soon.  In today’s The Montreal Gazette, the following article appeared on page A10, Feds take on Meat Hygiene, written by Sarah Schmidt of Postmedia News.  I’ll try to get the link for you; in the meantime, here are a few quotes:

“The federal government is set to overhaul Canada’s meat inspection rules…[to help] smaller business and align Canadian regulations with American policies, without lowering food safety standards….[T]he changes are about simplifying requirements…so [that small non-federally registered]…meat-processing plants [can] become federally registered….”

Okay…so the CFIA’s current food safety standards will not be affected, right?  In the article, the changes are referred to as “irritants,”  ”substantive”, and focus on labelling requirements, as well as on where the horsemeat is sold (in other words, if province-wide only then all rules are “relaxed.”) “Irritants” is about as descriptive as the word “nice” is; in other words, babblespeak terms that reveal nothing about anything.

And tell me again why it is that we need to align with US food policies?  Our biggest trading partner, yes, but is it possible that this is a furtive way for US pro-horse-slaughter proponents to have us provide their horsemeat–and of course since we’ll now be applying their food safety laws to our abattoirs–they would have no problem selling it either in the States or to their own horse-eating trade partners?  I don’t know…sounds fishy to me.  I remember that, last year, the Quebec farming industry was in a twist because labelling had become even more complex than previously, such that if you bought your apples, say, from the States and then made them into apple pie for sale here in Canada, that pie had to be labelled “Product of Canada”.  That information was in La Terre de chez nous, our agricultural newspaper, so I’ll have to look up the fine details and get back to you.  I don’t want to give the dark side any ideas but since their efforts to re-open abattoirs in at least four US states that I know of have been blocked so far, they may be diabolical (and desperate) enough to connive even further than they have so far.  Sue Wallis and Bill desBarres of the adamantly pro-slaughter Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada are in each other’s pockets, after all.

The article quotes Bob Kingston, union president of the meat inspectors at CFIA, and a few others…and, of course, here’s the kicker:

“One industry source familiar with the CFIA’s 17 pilot projects…says his technical advisers have concerns…they are uncomfortable with the science...citing the example of allowing the butchering of wild game in the same facility.”

A cottage industry is a very small-scale operation with a limited, niche or very small market.  If small-scale abattoirs which claim to sell horsemeat only province-wide (which I find hard to believe since QC sells to the Ontario gourmet market) also benefit from the relaxing of  ”irritating” labelling laws, then I shudder to think…in other words, the potential for corruption will explode.  (Read Roxanne’s comment below for a case-in-point–and that happened when the standard laws were in place.)  And all this is on top of a prime new threat to consumers:  that horsemeat will no longer be segregated from other food meats while at the butchering stage (which is exactly what Section 33 prevented).

So let’s return to how animal advocates’ arguments sometimes degenerate into distracting and useless racist polemics.  Case in point:  I was on somebody’s FB this week on a post shared through my link to a petition to China to stop giving baby turtles in plastic bags as souvenirs to tourists.  The third commentator wrote:  ”Well, what do you expect from people who throw pots and pans down the stairs to name their children?”  Won Hung Lo, and all that.  (Of course, he had an Italian family name, and as we know, Italians eat horsemeat, In Sito Horse Protection notwithstanding, so they’re another entire nation consigned to hell.)  The FB owner didn’t get it, so he replied:  ”you know, the yellow horde” (he spelled it “hoard” btw, so we know how low his knowledge base is). Instantly, the next few comments were about how the “Chinese” eat dogs and cats, etc…and I don’t remember the rest of the detritus because after deciding not to enter the fray, I left that person’s FB.  (And yes, good point, reader:  the only one who questioned who the tourists were, providing the “demand” for this heinous “supply” of slowly suffocating creatures, was left in the dust of the racist comments that buried the whole point.  In short, once the racist element took over, all other relevant points were ignored.)

The next day, there was another outburst on another site, this time against the Japanese, and this one was particularly offensive because it followed someone’s calm and circumspect description of cultural differences.  (Remember these were all so-called animal or horse advocates.) The comment was:  ”So how do we get those Japanese to stop eating horsemeat?”   “Well,” I was tempted to reply, “when you shut down all those illegal slaughterhouses in Florida, then maybe we can approach the Japanese government with (fairly) clean hands, and ask if they would stop importing our horses for the high-end dinners served to (probably) visiting WASP Americans or their Asian wanna-be’s.”  But I didn’t.  And the reason I didn’t is the same reason that I don’t write to Sue Wallis or here in Canada, Bill des Barres:  there is no reasoning with people who are unreasonable…or people who slam entire populations based on–what–that some of their citizens eat horsemeat?  I mean, do we really, really think that all few billion Chinese are, as we speak, chowing down on Trigger? Mind you, that in part explains some people’s utter disdain for Quebeckers.  In their minds, horsemeat for Quebeckers… “…is what’s fer supper!”  And all those horse-eating epicureans in Ontario, well…’nuff said.

Oh yes, except for you and me, everyone is disgusting….which brings me to the recent internet virus, or, um, phenomenon:  the young man who posted a supposedly horrid, graphic picture of a horse bleeding out, taken at his father’s abattoir.  N o w  what’s the problem?  Didn’t we already cover this in blog post Oregon?  In fact, that boy’s picture is much less horrifying than dozens I’ve seen (and you’ve seen, too) shown in the four videos distributed by our own CHDC, and (shading my eyes), Animals-Angels USA.  What seems to have upset everyone is that it was posted by a young man, and/or his father runs an abattoir and/or his father’s hypocrisy in chastising his son for facebooking a picture which shows what happens every three minutes in a horse abattoir–or, and this is the most comical:  that FB permitted it.  Have you seen some of the junk posted on FB?  Are you kidding?  Yes, hypocritical father who probably, up to now, has been thumping his son on the back, saying “One day, my boy, this (animals bludgeoned and bleeding to death)…all this will be yours!”  What parent doesn’t want his progeny to continue in his line of work?  (Haven’t you seen the 194os movie, Life With Father ,and countless others?)

Then, of course, because this issued from New Zealand, the whole thing somehow turns in to “Do they even care about this in New Zealand?”  Here we go again….  Of course, they do!  I have friends in NZ and OZ, and, at the moment, they’re more worried about “mulesing” practices on sheep, and the export of live animals across continents, never mind contiguous countries like Canada and Mexico.

Let’s stop–just stop–being so unsophisticated, so tribalistic, so…oh you know…as to think that we in North America are the only nations on earth that abhor and deplore how animals, flora and native fauna are treated on God’s good earth.  There are pockets of people in every single nation in the world who feel as we do, doing what they can, where they can to stop it.  Just because they don’t speak our language doesn’t mean we don’t speak the same language…get it?  Capisce?  Comprends-tu?  Drop the hoodie and expand your peripheral vision so it’s just like a horse’s panoramic view…just think how many more colleagues around the world we’ll have.

If racism or racist views develop from loving animals, then we now have the dark flip side of the often-cited argument that people in their youth who harm animals are likely to harm people as adults.  If the kind of people who make racism part of their pro-animal position always were so to begin with, then it’s a short step to a moral opportunism  that hijacks the cause.  Racism always harbours fascism, and as history has shown repeatedly, that road leads to hell.

The CFIA has just now made such an appeal. We have up to May 3rd of this year to send our comments and opinions to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), an arm of the Ministry of Agriculture (currently under MP Gerry Ritz) which has asked stakeholders (that’s us) for input.  Before you wave me away, saying, ‘well, I’m not a farmer…it doesn’t concern me,’ let me ask

if you work (because if you work or are retired from work, you have a vested interest in the health of Canada’s economy which determines how much your salary or CPP is);

if you eat (because if you eat, you may want to help ensure that our food safety controls are among the best, not the worst, in the world);

and, finally, if you are a horse-owner, breeder, or guardian (which is the preferred word nowadays) you will want to know that changes are afoot (on the hoof?) which concern you.  I think that covers just about everybody (especially anyone who eats).  Here are some excerpts from the CFIA proposed framework for change:

Traceability is defined as the ability to follow an item or group of items – including animals, plants, food products and agricultural inputs such as feed, seed or ingredients – from one point in the supply chain to another. This paper will focus on the proposed elements of life-cycle traceability for livestock and poultry species. For the purposes of this paper, life-cycle traceability refers to the scope from birth of an animal on a Canadian farm or import into Canada, up until its death (on-farm or at slaughter) or export out of Canada.

So, without being reductive, I’d say this means tracking from birth any animal born here, imported here or exported from here until its death.  That’s a pretty tall order.  One of the realities that worries me is (and I have this on good authority) that many animals, especially equines, reside here on small farms, hobbyfarms, what-have-you, yet appear nowhere on government forms, sometimes because the owner regards them as pets or service animals and sees no need to declare their existence to the government or any other nosey parker.  This issues directly from the belief that we are already over-regulated; there is too much government interference in our lives as it is, and I’ll be damned if I’ll wear a bicycle helmet if I don’t want to…that sort of thinking.  (So much for John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian ethic:  ”the good of the many outweigh the good of the few.”)

Yet there are righteous and exigent health reasons for the CFIA’s efforts here (not to mention the EU’s recent evolved and compassionate changes to food safety and animal transport which thwart our export sales there…but I digress):

The proposed framework will enhance Canada’s ability to: effectively manage animal health and related human health issues; rapidly respond to disease outbreaks and natural disasters (e.g. floods, ice storms) affecting the Canadian agricultural resource base; and efficiently respond to food safety issues that may originate from the animal resource base.

Depending on the sector to be regulated, the framework would require reporting of timely, accurate and relevant traceability information to databases maintained by industry-led administrators (e.g. Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA)) and would have strong provisions to ensure the protection of private and confidential business information. It would also allow for the sharing of traceability information among authorized stakeholders for intended uses. Beyond being a tool to manage animal and related human health and food safety issues, traceability could provide tangible benefits to industry through reduced economic impacts of animal health emergencies, and could play a role to help maintain existing domestic and international markets, and gain new ones.

Let’s make a checklist:

domestic food safety dangers (whether caused by natural disasters or our “animal resource base”) could be addressed more efficiently…YES.  (What about food safety dangers in countries we export to?)

traceability would be shared by industry stakeholders (like the Cdn Cattle Identification Agency)…NO.  The line reads “reporting traceability TO databases maintained by  industry-led administrators”.  Does this mean that industry, not government, would control how this new tracking system would work and who has access to it?

traceability records would be open to the public…NO.  The underscored line reads:  ”…ensure the protection of private and confidential business information.”  Now why would that be part of this suggested framework?   Why would the food production industry be any more sensitive than any other industry to nosey parkers like, say, me, a horse advocate?  I’m just say’n…. 

traceability would lead to exports to existing markets and help gain new ones…YES.  Well, we knew that, given that the EU is cracking down, and PM Harper just sojourned in China (or was it Korea?), and Minister Baird just returned from Myanmar.  Let’s just overlook countries with appalling human rights’ records, and pretend Canada is a Fuller Brush salesman.

Finally, given that the US government has stated rather tersely that the food safety of any slaughter-bound horse accepted for import into Canada is Canada’s responsibility, how does this suggested framework for change address that issue…and it’s a big issue because everyone keeps telling me that horse slaughter is a multi-million dollar industry in Canada, and we apparently cannot function economically without that morally egregious revenue.

I ask these questions because, as any marketing expert knows, it’s easy to rig questionnaire results if the questions are framed in such a way that they already harbour the answers.  I want the CFIA to act as a non-partisan agency–not a bedfellow of the current government and current industry practice.  I want the CFIA to be a good citizen…because, no matter how hard I try to do my duty as a citizen, if they’re succumbing to pressures that none of us knows about, then all my and your efforts are just written in the wind.

But I refuse to end on that note.  We need the CFIA and we need to keep harping, hammering, speaking up and out.  Don’t forget that, like any other group, the CFIA is made up of people, Canadian citizens like you and me. They also work and eat here, and have a vested interest in the same things we do.  In this, the first phase of the proposed framework, we have up to May 3rd to speak our minds.  And what we have to say is just as important, if not moreso, than industry.  As my husband says, ‘if you don’t even bother to buy a lotto ticket, you most certainly will not win…so don’t complain later that you never win anything!’

Comments may be emailed to:  trace.consultation@inspection.gc.ca  and written comments to:

Peter Pauker
Manager - CFIA Traceability Group,
Domestic Policy Directorate
1400 Merivale Road,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0Y9

When bankruptcy finally felled my own Curves, I can only say that the owner showed neither grace nor thoughtfulness nor concern for her members–and maybe worse–not even for her own employees.  I say this with great sadness because she was also the host of my first Book Signing (which lasted an entire week) last year.

On November 30th, 2011, members showed up only to find the doors locked and a bankruptcy notice taped to the door.  Many of us had been in the day before, and nothing seemed awry.  In fact, I later learned that the owner had been taking in new memberships right up to that fateful day.  I just don’t understand why she did it this way.  Apparently, even her employees didn’t know until the evening of the night before, and then had trouble and delays applying for UIC because the paperwork was nowhere to be found.

I’ve tried another Curves which is a 20-min drive from here.  I stuck with it up to a month ago, but the added distance consumes too much time, especially given that I need exercise four to five days a week, if not every day.  I’ve since decided that, after nearly seven years, it’s time for me to try something else.  As a youngster with polio, I was keenly aware of how important exercise is and have been physically active most of my adult life as a result.  Now, with osteoarthritis and leading the sedentary writer’s life, it’s even more important to keep those joints oiled.

I miss my Curves friends.  Some I knew better than others, and many knew me because of my novel, and were fantastic about supporting a local author.  It truly was a community club where everyone switched between French and English readily, and everyone shared family stories and funny, inconsequential stuff as well.

Maybe it’s the seven-year-itch…or maybe I just haven’t got the heart for Curves anymore….because a thoughtless Curves owner kicked my heart and everyone else’s to the curb…and didn’t even bother to look back.

But Evelyne Villers was the very first journalist courageous enough to publish her Book Review on a novel written in English about the Québec horse industry.  And today, she re-published her Review with a few changes and also publicized my upcoming booth at the Salon du Livre in Rigaud this Sunday, March 25th.  I can’t thank her enough for this heart-warming surprise.  Please go here to read Evelyne’s review (en français).