Tony Wardle: "We live with the pretence that farming and slaughter in the UK is the gold standard and it's only Johnny Foreigner who's cruel to animals".
Viva! can take some of the blame (or credit) for the current horse meat scandal. Ten years ago we discovered that 100,000 horses annually were being shipped from Poland to Italy by road. These horse shipments - often in dilapidated lorries with a single driver - were sometimes taking days with the horses not rested, fed or watered for the entire journey. Veterinary inspection at Gorizia, the port of entry, was abysmal and the horse's suffering would often continue as far as Sicily, where some would have to be dragged from the transporters with chains as they were incapable of standing. Other horse transporters from further east – Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus - were transiting through Polish check points without hindrance... We decided that this appalling abuse of animals had to be challenged and so opened offices in Warsaw to choke off the trade. We filmed in Polish markets where the horses were bought and watched them being uncomprehendingly loaded onto the-long distance transporters with no sign of food or water.
By Tony Wardle
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2013/02/14/comment-the-hypocrisy-of-the-horse-meat-scandal
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