Horse slaughter fell to historic lows, Mongolia surpassed Argentina as the largest exporter of equine meat

The export of beef broke all records in 2020, with more than 900 thousand tons shipped, especially to China. But the opposite happened with another traditional livestock item in Argentina: horse meat. In 2020, the slaughter of horses was the lowest in decades and, as this type of meat is almost not consumed here, exports also collapsed dramatically. Now they are half of what they were 15 years ago. In 2007, in effect, Argentina exported 33,235 tons of horse meat and comfortably led the international trade of this species, which moved a total of 151 thousand tons. In other words, the country provided 1 out of every 5 kilos of equine meat traded between countries. In dollars, the business was not negligible, despite the fact that the horse always quoted one notch below the bovine. About 85 million dollars entered the country. In 2019, twelve years after that photograph, world trade fell to 117 thousand tons, 23%. But shipments from Argentina fell much more, 47%, to settle at only ...