Q&A with Caroline Howe of the Horse Welfare Collective

Caroline Howe, a lifetime equine enthusiast who competes in the hunter/jumper discipline, is the founder and executive director of the North Carolina-based Horse Welfare Collective. She created the non-profit organization–which she operates by herself–in 2021 to bring transparency to the American horse slaughter industry.

Recent events–such as last week's news out of Florida involving the alleged slaughter of a Thoroughbred that was captured on a hidden camera–put TDN in touch with the Horse Welfare Collective. In a half-hour phone interview with TDN on July 29, Howe detailed what she is trying to accomplish with her efforts, with an emphasis on how the slaughter and the Thoroughbred industries overlap. A transcription of that conversation follows, edited for brevity and clarity.

TDN: Please explain the Horse Welfare Collective's mission.

CH: I founded the Horse Welfare Collective with the goal of really raising awareness about the U.S. horse slaughter industry and its impact on horse welfare, as well as public health, because there are public health implications with the U.S. horse slaughter industry. Initially, I really had no idea that U.S. horses were being sent to slaughter. So I just started doing more and more digging into that, and I realized that there's really this lack of awareness out there about what's happening to a lot of our horses. And also, there's a huge lack of oversight from the federal and state and local levels.

TDN: A lot of people might think that when the federal government first started defunding the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s ability to inspect horse-meat processing plants several decades ago, that helped to get rid of equine slaughter in our country because the plants couldn't legally operate without the inspections. But that's not the case?

CH: When Congress voted to not appropriate funds to the USDA to inspect horse meat that effectively closed the–I think there were three at the time–U.S. horse-meat plants. But horse slaughter is demand-driven. Plants [in other countries still] slaughter horses based on the consumer demand for horse meat and the by-products. So with the cessation of horse slaughter in the U.S., it didn't help from the global perspective of welfare for the horses, because there continued to be an international demand for horse meat. That meant U.S. horses were instead being shipped to Mexico and Canada.

TDN: But aren't there still safeguards in place to prevent or deter shipping of horses outside our country for slaughter?

CH: When 30 horses at a time are crammed onto an 18-wheeler and shipped 28-plus hours to Mexico or Canada, the USDA really doesn't have any resources or funding to actively review any kinds of safeguards, or welfare guards, or public health guards that are put into place, such as shipping certificates and health certificates.

They're also not able to enforce things like the Commercial Transportation of Equines for Slaughter Act, because there's a restriction of the use of federal funding to actually do that.

TDN: Your collective tracks horses of all breeds. To what extent are Thoroughbreds involved, and what would you like people in our industry to know about the situation?

CH: I want to start by saying that I think there are a lot of things that the Thoroughbred industry has started to do right. I think there's a lot more awareness about Thoroughbreds ending up in slaughter-market channels. I don't want to discount that by any means. But I definitely want people to know I look at shipping certificates in my work for the Horse Welfare Collective, and I see lots of Thoroughbreds on the shipping certificates.

One of my first rescues was a Thoroughbred who was five years old and sold for $500,000 as a yearling. I reconnected that horse with their breeder. They were very happy [I did that], but they were crushed to learn the condition that horse was in, and that the horse was on its way to possibly being shipped to Mexico for slaughter.

So I want people to understand that it doesn't matter what your horse accomplished, how much money they made, how much money they didn't make. If you're not following them or doing your homework to make sure you know where they're going and where they end up, it's very possible they've been slaughtered or are in a horrific condition and on their way to being slaughtered.

It's also really important to understand where you're sending your horse in international markets. When you're selling a horse at Keeneland or Fasig-Tipton, and you're sending that horse to an [overseas] buyer, especially South Korea, they have a really hard time identifying where those horses go [after their racing careers].

I don't contact breeders so much any more to tell them about the conditions their horses are in, because it's honestly become so overwhelming I can't keep up.

Sarah Andrew photo

TDN: Are actions by rescuers buying horses out of American “kill pens” helping to fill the gaps left by governmental non-enforcement?

CH: You have a lot of rescue awareness now, which is great. But now you have kill buyers really benefitting from this industry in a two-pronged way.

Number one, they're still selling to slaughter plants. But they're also marketing these “for slaughter” horses to rescues. [The buyers want to prey upon the fact that] the more dire these horses' conditions are, the more likely it is that they'll get rescued. But then the horses are well-built, such as Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses, they're continuing to be shipped to slaughter plants because they're a more attractive physical specimen.

TDN: With specific reference to Thoroughbreds, are there geographic areas in the country where racehorses getting sent to slaughter are particularly problematic?

CH: I see a lot of Thoroughbreds coming out of Ohio and Arizona. That's sort of a big pipeline.

And this is a huge issue because this is where the lack of oversight comes in. People take Thoroughbreds from tracks or from livestock auctions and just kind of sneak them through the system. You used to be able to look at shipping certificates, and it's much harder to do that now [since the advent of] microchips.

Now the vets who are doing the health and shipping certificates are no longer required to put the breed of the horse or any tattoos or markers, because now they have the microchips. So now it's virtually impossible to trace if Thoroughbreds are going across the border, particularly to Mexico. There are no identifying specifics on their paperwork–just microchip numbers.

TDN: Some slaughter still takes place in this country in the form of black-market meat traders. In 2019, we reported on unsolved cases that seemed to fit this pattern in Florida, and there was another story in the Tampa Bay Times last week of an alleged Thoroughbred slaughter that is being investigated but has yet to result in any criminal charges being filed.

CH: This is something that is much more difficult to uncover and understand. Particularly in Central Florida, in the Ocala area, and Southern Florida, in the Miami area, there is a market for the underground horse-meat trade. There are populations of people who live there and consume horse meat. My understanding is that the majority of them are Cuban, South American, but I don't have any concrete data supporting that. One thing that I also don't think people realize is that big game farms import a lot of horse meat to feed tigers, et cetera, so you'll also find instances of horses being illegally slaughtered around big game parks.

TDN: In the Florida case from last week, a citizen took it upon himself to go undercover and infiltrate the alleged underground horse-meat trade. He purportedly captured the slaughter of a Thoroughbred in a video. When he turned his findings over to law enforcement, he wasn't pleased that his efforts did not yield immediate arrests, so he distributed his findings to the local media, resulting in broadcasts and published news stories. Law enforcement officials subsequently held their own news conference, and went on record saying that people who take undercover videos aren't helpful to obtaining convictions, because that type of evidence is problematic to introduce in court. What's your take on that situation?

CH: My take on it is to have empathy for every side. I always go back to just finding common ground. What's something we can all agree on? I understand the arguments on either side, and I think everyone has really good points [from which] you can find common ground and learn from this situation to say, “Hey, how can we do it right next time?” This is a product of people not communicating or being on the same page. So people try to take things in their own hands, and then, as a result, it's just wires being crossed.

So learn from this experience. Work with the USDA, work with the local government. Say, “In the future, what can we do to best help you prosecute people who are doing this illegally?” Most of the time, everyone has good intentions on the law enforcement side and on the animal welfare side. It's a matter of really embracing that and saying, “Hey, we all have one goal here. Let's work at this as a team, and understand that it's going to take compromise.”

TDN: What can Thoroughbred industry participants be doing better to eradicate slaughter?

CH: Number one, allocating more funds to aftercare programs. And putting a little bit more into finding some concrete solutions for these horses who are, for instance, kind of broken after they've raced and can't go on to have other jobs; having kind of retirement scenarios for them.

I think it's also really important–and this is more ideological–just as a whole to understand that people get into raising and training and breeding because they love horses, and not losing sight of that. Realizing that when racing careers are over, these horses still have so much life to live.

If you bring an animal into the world, you need to follow him and take some accountability and responsibility for making sure that they end up in a good spot.