How many tons of horse meat does Argentina formally produce and what happens to it?

The final data on the activity of the only four slaughterhouses authorized by Senasa (National Agri-Food Health Service) to slaughter horses in the country indicate that in 2023, 88,115 horses were killed there, from which 19,545 tons of bone-in beef were extracted. . This product, which is culturally rejected by Argentine consumers, is usually exported to European Union countries that still consume it, generating income of about 50 million dollars annually. In any case, it seems to be a business that is slowly becoming extinct. The task declared in 2023 turned out to be the smallest in the last ten years. Those 88 thousand horses last year were almost 13% less than those that had been processed in 2022, while meat production was reduced by 10% from one year to the next, with a drop of 2,873 tons. According to recent data published by the Ministry of Agriculture, not even in 2020 (a year shaken by the coronavirus pandemic) was horse slaughter in Argentina as reduced as last year. ...