Would people accept a horse meat factory?

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The Hard Shoulder with Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman. On Newstalk with Kiya.

Shane Coleman (1:09)

Now, the Fine Gael Senator, Paraic Brady, has called for a horse meat factory to be open in Ireland for what he describes as worn out animals. Here he is speaking earlier.

Paraic Brady (1:21)

When an animal is worn out, we have seen horse meat factories, and we have one in this country for a number of years.

I would like to see a horse meat factory open up again, because it's a product that when you go to France, you eat horse meat.

When you go to other countries across Europe, you eat horse meat. It's a commodity here. We have horses here that are valuable at the end of life, or a horse that mightn't be good enough in the racing industry, hasn't got any of the injections, hasn't got any of the pathological stuff that's banned, and is still fit for human consumption. And that's on its book. So I'd just like to know, are we any closer to having a factory open up here, because I do think it's certainly something that's needed, because that really touches in on the welfare of horses. And we don't want to see these horses left around the country. And when they are, we want to do it.

Shane Coleman (2:18)

Okay, that is Fine Gael Centre. That was, I should say, Fine Gael Centre, Paraic Brady there speaking earlier.

We are joined by Maddie Doyle, spokesperson for My Lovely Horse Rescue. What did you make of the senator's comments, Paraic? Or Maddie, excuse me.

Maddie Doyle (2:35)

Good evening. Thanks for having me on. I'm sort of, yeah, I'm listening again to what he's saying there. And I'm sort of mystified as how he thinks that slaughter is a welfare solution for end of life care, for horses coming out of, you know, specifically the racing industry. And the fact that worn out animals, I'm not quite sure what he means by worn out animals. And maybe he needs to clarify that a little bit more. And then referring to them as a product. And we know that, you know, none of us are going to easily forget the scenes we witnessed during the RT's undercover investigation into Shannon site. And, you know, apart from the slaughter practices there, the welfare issues in the layerage was appalling. I think nobody came away unaffected by that.

But I suppose, look, horses in Ireland are raised primarily for sport and leisure and as pets. That's the reality of why we breed them and why we rear them. We're not like France and Belgium in that we don't, you know, we generally don't have a population here that consume horse meat. We don't have horses specially raised here for human consumption. And therefore, you know, it follows that the majority of horses raised here are actually not suitable for the human food chain. It's just the nature of why we breed them makes them unsuitable. They also live very long lives. They change hands many, many times during the course of that lifetime, which can make traceability a very huge problem.

Europol were here only recently working with the Department of Agriculture, raiding different premises around the country in relation to traceability issues. So the issue of traceability is alive and well, it's not going away.

And if most horses were suitable for the human food chain, then there wouldn't be a need to launder their identities.

Shane Coleman (4:37)

There was a report carried out by Professor Paddy Wall of UCD after that Primetime Investigates show on looking at basically horse welfare reforms and action plan for that. It did talk about a practical, humane, end of life solution for horses and it did recommend the establishment of a properly run, regulated horse slaughter facility in Ireland. Would you have a difficulty with that?