Sir, - In the 1960s and early 1970s, your paper used to publish letters from my mother, Mrs Hazel Dunne (also known as Hazel Noble), who was a doughty campaigner against the export of live horses for slaughter to the Continent.
The outbreak of the current BSE and foot-and-mouth crises draws attention to the tendency to export not just live horses, but sheep, lamb, pigs, cattle for slaughter at long distances from where they were reared. The local English-language weekly here, the Budapest Sun, recently carried a harrowing report about the suffering of some cattle exported for slaughter from Romania on a long journey through Hungary towards Western Europe.
Why is it necessary to send animals on these long distances? Cannot they be slaughtered at the abattoir nearest to where they were reared, and all the preparation of their corpses into the various cuts of meat done locally, accompanied by veterinary certificates of freedom from infection from disease of any sort? Much cruelty to the poor beasts will be spared, as will the risk of their spreading any infection they may be carrying to other herds.
I should like to stir the pot - in memory of my mother's own campaigning - and to hope that a sane solution will be found. - Yours, etc.,
Peter Haley-Dunne, Budapest, Hungary.