Last week Horse & Hound magazine news editor Abigail Butcher joined up with World Horse Welfare’s Jo White to track the journey of live horses going to slaughter from Poland to Italy, a 1700 mile trek. This journey can often take 4 or 5 days, and with the abolition of border controls this now means it is often a non stop journey of hell across Europe. 

It it always upsetting to watch these images, no matter how many times you see them it doesn’t get any easier, sentiments it seems that are also felt by  other welfare groups. Here at ERF we have witnessed the condition of equines in France that are bound for the slaughter houses, some their conditions considerably worse than those reported by H&H in this report. Part of our work at ERF is monitoring the local sales and reporting our findings to help fight to improve enforcement of the current transport regulations.  We intend as part of our assistance to this to be able to track some of the French horses on their outward travel to slaughter houses across Europe. This is a costly operation and we ask for your support to enable us to do this. As the report shows just a minority of these transporters are abiding by the rules and using the staging posts to rest the horses……what about the others?

Read Abigails online factual diary here…

Day 1 – Central Poland

Day 2 – Zebrzydowice staging post

Day 3 – Hungary/Slovenia border

Day 4 – Slovenia

Day 5 – Italian border 

Their findings and what you can do to help

ERF actively support WHW and WSPA  campaigns on the fight to end long haul live transport….please do something positive towards this today and sign the petition here…

 ‘Make a noise’ campaign petition