On Monday the 13th and Tuesday the 14th of April, Eyes on Animals and Animal Welfare Foundation organized, together with Redrock and Austrade (Australian Trade Commission) the second animal welfare seminar for slaughter animals in Turkey. The conference and training on "Improving Animal Welfare and Meat Quality in Turkey" was held at Ankara…

On our way to Tucuman, we pass a truck loaded with horses. The open-roof vehicle is a typical Argentinean livestock transporter and does not offer the animals any protection from sun and rain. In Argentina, the same trucks are used for cattle and horses. They are completely inappropriate to transport horses as the trap-doors, when they are opened,…

In the morning, we meet with a slaughter horse dealer in a small town near Salta in the north of Argentina. He is the main dealer in this area and has two horse collecting stations. He tells us that he sends only about three trucks per month to slaughter at this time of the year, as they have not yet started bringing the horses down from the…

Today we meet with a slaughter horse dealer in a small town near Santiago del Estero. He says that he has 30 horses at his collecting station at the moment and will have a truck full in a few days. In conversation he mentions a person he works with from La Banda, who organizes the transport, paperwork and does all the dealings with the…

We return to the slaughterhouse Lamar at 3:00 at night. More pens are now also filled with horses that have been delivered in the meantime. The pens look overcrowded and the horses do not have enough space. Animals often show aggressive behaviour in crowded conditions. Most of the horses are calm and resting, but we note a black horse that…

When we arrive at the horse slaughterhouse in Entre Rios, we see around 20 to 30 horses in a paddock behind the plant. They have no shelter from the sun and no feed. We notice that in the empty paddocks, there is some shelter, although it is run down, and there are also some large straw bales. We can see from the distance that many horses are thin…

When we arrive at the slaughterhouse Lamar at midday, we see a transporter entering the plant and unloading horses. The vehicle is a typical Argentinean livestock transporter: It has no protective roof and the trap-doors are much too low for horses. A worker climbs up to the open top of the trailer and strikes the animals’ heads with a long stick.…

The Syntex farm is located in a very remote area. We see hundreds of horses in open fields. Parts of the fencing are made of barbed wire, posing a risk of injury. We detect a thin white mare that appears to be weak and apathetic. While all the horses around her are grazing, she is lying down and not moving. The tails of many mares are cut short,…

When we arrive at the slaughterhouse Clay at 10:30, there are two groups of horses in the pens next to the loading ramp of the collecting station. Some horses Areal ready standing in the raceway leading to the ramp. Apparently, the horses from the collecting station are loaded onto a truck to be brought over to the slaughterhouse,which is located…