How to kill a horse

A while ago I got the assignment to photograph at a slaughterhouse for horses. In fact there are too many private held horses in the Netherlands, so people are trying to sell them on the Internet. This, in many cases doesn’t work because there is just no need for these high number of animals. Especially when the horses suffer from something that impacts there function as a sport horse in a negative manner.

I photographed at a slaughterhouse before, but I was still excited when I got on this assignment. Anyhow there is a difference between seeing a pig rather than a horse dieing. It is probably because today a horse is nothing more than a pet for us. There is no longer any economical need for dobbins or working horses like a 100 years ago. Next to that horses do not get reared to feed the human race like pigs or cattle do.

But I also think, if you eat meat, you should be aware of where it is coming from. At least we should keep in mind, that the in plastic wrapped peace of meat in the supermarket was an animal before.

Anyways, I spend some hours photographing the slaughters following their work. This is how it looks: