Nearly 3,000 thoroughbred horses slaughtered for meat in Ireland since 2020 : worldnews

The figures were described as “quite horrifying” by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, who was provided with the data by the minister for agriculture in response to a parliamentary question last week.

“It seems like that the horses are being killed simply because they are not fast enough to win, and it is cheaper to kill them than to keep them,” he said.

“It raises a new question about the tens of millions of euro of public money given every year to the horse racing industry.”

The Government has provided funding of over €1.46 billion to the industry under the Horse and Greyhound Racing Act since 2001, and Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) will receive a further €70 million this year alone.

Last year, a BBC Panorama documentary claimed that injured Irish race horses were being transported to abattoirs in the UK for slaughter against animal welfare guidelines.

It also alleged that contaminated horse meat was entering the human food chain as a result of microchips being fraudulently swapped in animals that were earmarked for slaughter.

Consumption of horse meat has been growing globally since the 1990s. It is considered a delicacy in parts of Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Belgium, and is also commonly served in China, Russia, Central Asia, Mexico, Argentina and Japan.