According to information from Animal Equality Mexico, approximately 20,000 horses are sent annually from the United States to Mexico and Canada to be slaughtered, and their meat is exported to countries such as Brazil, China, Italy, France, and Russia. The organization has documented cruelty in the Mexican slaughterhouses where the exported horses arrive, exposing abuses such as beatings, electric shocks, and physical mistreatment of the animals. This revelation in 2022 has led to an increase in demands to prohibit this practice.
In a 2017 study conducted by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, it was discovered that in some regions of Mexico, horse meat is sold as beef, raising concerns about the lack of regulation in the equine meat market. Sharon Núñez, president of Animal Equality, has urged that the export of horses for human consumption be banned in countries like Mexico, and is advocating for the approval of the SAFE Act, which seeks to end the cross-border trade of horses intended to be slaughtered for their meat.
The SAFE Act (Save America’s Forgotten Equines Act) was introduced on February 27 by a bipartisan group of legislators, led by Senators Ben Ray Luján and Lindsey Graham, and Representatives Vern Buchanan and Jan Schakowsky. This initiative seeks to prohibit the slaughter of horses for human consumption in the United States and prevent their export to countries like Mexico and Canada, where they are slaughtered to market their meat in international markets.
The consumption of horse meat has been banned in the United States since 2007, when Congress withdrew funding for the Department of Agriculture to oversee the slaughterhouses that conducted this type of killing. Despite the concealment of this practice, the majority of American citizens oppose it, and the proposed legislation currently under discussion seeks to end this industry and the suffering of the animals involved.
