Mr. Speaker, I would like to say from the very start that the Liberal Party supports the bill.
The bill tries to find a balance between the cultural consumption of horsemeat by many people around the world. In Kazakhstan, Quebec, France, et cetera, people do consume horsemeat. It has been a tradition, so we want to understand that cultural difference.
We want to understand also that Canada has a $19 million horsemeat industry, mostly for export, that brings in money for people in that industry. There are only five areas across Canada: two in Quebec, two in Ontario, and one in British Columbia. We do not want to stop these people from having an industry.
The bill strikes to find a balance between the valid reason for exporting horsemeat for slaughter to countries where people eat horsemeat, but it also recognizes that there is a difference between a horse and a cow. Cows are raised primarily for slaughter. From the moment we start raising cows or sheep or chickens or any other animals that we raise for slaughter, there is a fair sense that we need to ensure that the animal has not had unsafe hormones or unsafe drugs in its blood.
Horses raised as pets or for racing or for other reasons tend to have a very long history of injections of some kind, either a lot of corticosteroids for arthritis or injuries or else a fair amount of hormones to build the right kind of muscle.
Horses that are raised to be pets, to be household friends, to draw carriages, et cetera, and horses raised for racing and for other equestrian purposes have a history of having been given certain medications. If, at the end of their lives, we slaughter them for human consumption, those medications in the horsemeat could pose a threat to human health. We do not ordinarily give these drugs to humans or to livestock that is raised for human consumption.
The bill is saying that if we wish to have a horse slaughter industry, we should breed horses as we do cows, primarily for that purpose, so that they would be raised with all of those checks and balances in place in terms of the way they are raised, the medications that are taken, the type of food that they eat, et cetera, so that they would be safe.
That is an important step for Canada to take.
The United States eradicated its horsemeat industry in 2007, and now the only two countries that actually use horses for slaughter in North America are Mexico and Canada.
All the bill is saying is that there needs to be this kind of balance so that we do not endanger human health.
We heard earlier that some prohibitions are in place. However, at the end of a horse's life, when it is no longer useful for the purpose it was bred for, that still does not mean that the horse has not been given, over its years, the kinds of medications needed to make it perform as well as it needed to for the purposes for which it was raised. Therefore, we cannot say after the fact that we are going to check the meat, because the bottom line is that we do not have the ability to ensure that down the road it would be safe for humans to eat horses that are bred for purposes other than for slaughter.
What the bill would do, really, is prohibit most horses from being transported for slaughter for meat, but it would make an exception for horses that have been bred primarily for human consumption and that are accompanied by a complete lifetime medical history.
Basically, we are saying that we want to put in checks and balances.
For those who say this is all emotional, it is not, actually. I think there is fairly good evidence to show that horses that are not bred for slaughter carry medications that could actually harm people. The proponents of the bill in Canada are the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, the Humane Society International, and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Basically we think that the bill is eminently supportable. We do not want to put the businesses that are currently in Canada out of business.
What we are saying is that here is a plan to be followed if we are going to maintain what we do for every kind of animal food that we eat, which is to ensure that it is safe, that all of the health precautions have been taken, and that the animals have not been given medications that are stored in their muscles and in their fat and that will be passed on to humans who are not able to survive with that level of a lifetime of medication.
This bill is an extension of a former bill introduced in October, Bill C-322, which was a bill to amend the Health of Animals Act. The member moving this bill says that the former bill did not extend far enough and did not include the checks and balances he wanted. What we now have is a very thoughtful bill, and we support it.