Argentina | San Vicente, province of Buenos Aires | Raúl Onorato’s farm
An emaciated mare with prominent bones on Onorato’s pasture.
Mare and foal have died during birth.
Dead animals are left to rot inside the horse pasture.
We first visited Raúl Onorato’s farm in San Vicente at the end of August, after the confiscation of some of his horses in the “field of horror” in Ezeiza. At that time, we saw no horses at his farm. Today, 2½ months later, there are several hundreds of horses on his pastures. It is a sunny day but the animals have no shade available, not even from trees. Horses of various breeds (ponies, sport horses, etc.) are mixed together and they are in different health and body condition. Some are well-fed, while others are emaciated, injured or lame.
We find three dead bovines and three dead horses, left to rot inside the pastures. One of them is a mare who died while giving birth. It is unacceptable that heavily pregnant mares, who are about to give birth, are left on the pastures without supervision. They should be kept at the farm and be inspected regularly.
We note that there are a lot of pregnant mares and foals. Onorato might be breeding some horses for slaughter, in addition to buying and stealing horses. Criminal horse dealers like Onorato need a certain percentage of legal horses in order to legalise consignments that include stolen horses. Raúl Onorato is known to have been dealing with stolen horses for many years. He is currently under house arrest, wearing an electronic ankle tag. However, with the help of his family members, he continues the business with slaughter horses.
