Save Dartmoor's hill ponies by eating them, says charity

A charity dedicated to protecting Dartmoor hill ponies has recommended a counterintuitive solution to the species' steady decline: selling their meat for human consumption.

The move has been proposed "with reluctance" by the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association (DHPA) which argues that the only way to ensure that the animals have a future is to sell them for eating.

Charlotte Faulkner, founder of the DHPA, said in a letter to another charity, the South West Equine Protection (Swep), that their members should contemplate "giving measured support to this understandably upsetting subject, which as pony lovers we find so hard to accept".

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"It has taken years of considering reports and listening to the outcome of meetings to recognise and reluctantly accept that Dartmoor pony herders will only carry on keeping their herds if they have a sustainable market for them. We are in real danger of ponies disappearing from Dartmoor altogether," she said.

However, Swep "reacted with fury" when the letter arrived, according to the Daily Telegraph, and insisted it would never support breeding and killing the animals for profit. Becky Treeby, the charity's welfare officer, said: "It would be very upsetting to look at foals which in six months time could be in someone's burger."

According to the Dartmoor National Park Authority, the number of Dartmoor ponies has fallen from more than 30,000 in the 1950s to fewer than 3,000 today.

An RSPCA spokesman told The Independent that killing horses for meat was "an emotive subject as many see them as companion animals rather than a food source, a sentiment the RSPCA has great sympathy with".

But he added that if the idea went ahead the main concern would be for the ponies to be "cared for, handled, transported and slaughtered in a way which safeguards their welfare at all times". He expressed reservations about sending ponies to the continent for slaughter. "Once there, it's difficult to monitor whether EU transportation legislation is met and if the animals are slaughtered humanely."

However, the animals may not have to travel far at all, as a similar idea has also been proposed on nearby Exmoor. A report by the Exmoor National Park Authority and the Exmoor Pony Society last year backed proposals to set up a market for horsemeat in the UK.

"As there is so limited a market for ridden ponies, show ponies and conservation grazers, why not promote the free-living Exmoor ponies as a food animal as much as an amenity or aesthetic resource?" the report said.