CANADA: HORSE-SLAUGHTER LAWS PROTESTS AGAINST!INHUMANE PRACTICES!

WINNIPEG -PROTESTS AGAINST INHUMANE PRACTICES!  While Rooster may be an odd name to give a horse, a group of Winnipeg demonstrators on Monday joined the aging Shetland pony who lived to crow another day. part of a series of cross-country demonstrations offering support to an apparently stalled bill that seeks to amend Canada's horse-slaughter laws.

"The concern here is there is no humane way to slaughter a horse," said Olga Krywyj, who organized the lunch-hour demonstration in support of Bill C-544.

The private member's bill  tabled by NDP MP Alex Atamanenko in June  seeks to ban the killing of horses for human consumption.

The Winnipeg demonstrators said while the 18-year-old Rooster was lucky, many old and unwanted animals won't escape Canada's abbatoirs. Statistics from Agriculture Canada show that nearly 94,000 horses were slaughtered in 2009, nearly twice as many as the number of horses killed for food in 2005.

Most of the meat is shipped to Europe and Asia.

But Krywyj said horses heading for slaughter in Canada are not being raised as food-producing animals, and many are treated with drugs that are prohibited from entering the human food chain.

Further, she said the animals are electro-shocked and shot in the head with a .22 calibre rifle bullet that often misses the brain. "Many times they're still conscious and have to be shot three or four times," she said, adding that undercover investigations of Canadian abbatoirs have shown still-conscious horses hanging by the leg while they're bled.

Protests reportedly took place Monday in Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Edmonton and the Montreal area.

Though Manitoba doesn't have any abbatoirs, Bonnie Riddell  who runs Papa's Ranch Equine Rescue  said she sees a lot of unwanted foals coming in. She said the business of turning impregnated horse urine into the estrogen used in birth control is shrinking, and so the glut of abandoned equines grows.

"We get calls from all over the place, but mostly southern Manitoba," said Riddell, who brought Rooster to the demonstration from her ranch 40 kilometres north of Winnipeg. "It gets busy this time of year. Pastures are depleted and people have to think about housing (the animals) this time of year."

She said she has 28 horses and donkeys in her care, but expects that number may grow to 35 by next month.

And some people would rather make a small buck and sell an animal for slaughter than give away an unwanted horse; Riddell says an old pony like Rooster would only fetch about $50.