Every year 40 thousand living horses are exported from Poland to be
slaughtered in Italy and France. This is one of the domains in which
Poland is a market leader.
The
idea of helping horses transported to slaughterhouses has already
been supported by 500 thousand people, who have signed the petition
to ban the transport of living horses abroad. The main consumers are
Italian. They buy the biggest and fattest specimens paying even
4-6000PLN (1-1.5000 EUR). Crammed into trucks (up to 35 horses!),
terrified, hungry and thirsty animals travel thousands of kilometers
to the slaughterhouses, even as
far as to Sardinia.
The Committee for Helping Animals in Tychy (founded in 1998) is
involved in collecting money to buy back the horses straight from
the transports, reloading centres, horse markets (Bodzentyn,
Sochaczew) and from people who wish to get rid of them. We are a
community association and so far we have saved 80 horses. Some of
them were already in the slaughterhouse. Among them was a two year
old stallion named Brando, his nine-year old mother, Figa, who gave
birth on the 9th June 2003 and Toronto, the only horse
free of unhappy memories. These horses were miraculously saved by
the army from the Warta river flood.
Odra, a 15 year old Polish pony mare was working hard in
hippotherapy. When she was diagnosed with laminitis she was sent to
the slaughterhouse.
A four year old stallion called Arlan, a first-rate horse on one of
the Polish stud farms was sold because he became blind in one eye.
Litwa and ¦nieżka, mares about 15 years old were working in the
forest. They arrived in Bodzentyn dirty and with slaughter numbers
cut on their sides. The horses were staggering and smelled of
alcohol. Drunk and dizzy, horses were already losing weight on the
way to Tychy and they were hard to recognise after unloading.
Nadzieja and Urbanek were bought on 13th June 2003 from
the reloading centre near Kraków. They were neglected and starved
almost to death.
In July we were lucky to buy an 18 year old gelding that after many
years of hard field work had been fed on potatoes for a month to put
on weight so that it would be possible to get a better price for
him! We called him Kuba.
The horses we bought on 14th July 2003 do not have
sponsors yet. We bought them from the horse market in Bodzentyn
near Kielce. These are two mares, Hawanka and Mona, and a 4 month
old foal that had a tendon contraction on his front legs. We called
him Karu¶. He was neglected and starved to death - the owner
did not help the poor foal up because he saw no point in it.
Sajra is a 15 year old mare bought from one of the Polish stud
farms. She had laminitis on four legs and a reproduction defect.
On 10th November 2003 at the horse market in
Bodzentyn we managed to buy a one year old male foal, fed on salted
potatoes. The animal was drinking water endlessly which made him
look fatter. After being transported to our rescue centre, he had
indigestion. Now he is much better. We called him Fortek.
Our rescue centre is also home to other mares: Kara, Batuta, Selia,
Galicja, Ba¶ka, Flower, and Gryfka as well as geldings :Tyszek,
Bingo, Kasztan, Lucky, Figaro, Bandero, Sam, Węgielek, Megan,
Arbiter, Mystic, Elian, Kuba, Alegro and two ponies: B±bel and
Bunio.
Our
dream is to create a rescue centre for all rescued horses so that
their perception of humankind is more positive. Please help us
rescue animals sentenced to death in the slaughterhouses so that
Poles can regain their reputation as horse-lovers.
