W5 did an excellent job on their examination of Canada’s controversial shipping of live horses overseas to Japan where they are fattened to obesity and slaughtered to be made into “sashimi” which is eaten raw with soy sauce. The reason for the extreme fattening is to produce heavily marbled meat. The episode is called Flight Animals.

What was not discussed was the fact that horses are very sensitive to being overweight and so this creates all kinds of physical health issues, one of the worst being what is called Founder or Laminitis. Founder/Laminitis is when inflammation occurs throughout the body, but especially in the hooves. If severe enough, this can cause the hoof wall to actually separate from the flesh of the foot. It can also create what is called rotation which means the coffin bone in the hoof will rotate and if the situation is bad enough can cause the coffin bone to penetrate the floor of the hoof. This means that the bone is actually sticking out!

Signs that a horse has foundered are the horse leans back on its “heels” to try and take the weight off the painful toe area, they are constantly shifting their weight from foot to foot, they want to lay down a lot, again to relieve the pain they feel when their weight is on their feet. Pain is worse when they are on hard-packed surfaces, which is how the horses in Japan are housed.

So basically, these horses are tortured before being slaughtered.

What can you do to stop this? Call or write to your local MP to tell them to stop this treatment of horses, go to https://canadianhorsedefencecoalition.org/ where you will find more information and a petition sponsored by MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith and supported by numerous Members of Parliament that you can sign.

Share the W5 program online and with your friends and colleagues. Haven’t seen the program yet? You can watch it on YouTube.

Canada should not be involved in this abuse of animals!

Theresa Nolet, Summerland

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