01.12.10

Agencies mount sweep in search of illegal Miami-Dade slaughterhouses

A massive force of federal, state and county agents early Tuesday hit an isolated pocket of West Miami-Dade County suspected to be at the center of Miami's black market in horse flesh, an illicit trade exposed by nearly two dozen grisly horse killings.

It was a major operation, with at least 100 police officers and regulators, from county code enforcers to animal service investigators to state business regulators to federal environmental and food safety inspectors.

``We don't know what is in there. We could have slaughterhouses, illegal dumping. We're targeting every aspect,'' said Charles Danger, director of Miami-Dade County's Building and Neighborhood Compliance Department. The multiagency effort, planned for months, was intended as a crackdown on a string of unlicensed slaughterhouses that have operated openly for decades in a small unincorporated area west of Hialeah Gardens called the C-9 Basin.

``We've been working on this since the first news of the horse slaughters,'' said Danger. ``This is an area that for a long time has needed enforcement action.''

Aided by police officers on the scene, ``to keep the peace,'' Danger said, teams from 14 federal, state and county agencies began the sweep just as the sun began peeking through the clouds on a chilly morning.

There were no initial reports of arrests or code, environmental, health or other violations, but teams were swarming over a number of properties in an area of unpaved roads and nurseries mixed with rundown trailer parks and small farms or ranchos, some with ramshackle pens and corrals crammed with animals and waste.

Inspectors were looking for more than evidence of illegally butchered horses. County regulators say the area is home to an unregulated, unsanitary cottage industry that butchers pigs, goats and chickens for everything from Nochebuena dinners to Santeria rituals to neighborhood café fare.

Miami-Dade has only two licensed slaughter houses, which require humane stunning before slaughter and must meet an array of health and handling standards.

The C-9 basin, just north of Okeechobee Road and west of Florida's Turnpike, is also infamous as a hot spot for problems from cockfighting rings to big, unpermitted gravel lots for semi-trailers. Police and county code and environmental agencies have targeted it with periodic sweeps, but Tuesday's operation was the largest crackdown ever.

As of Dec. 1, 21 horse carcasses were discovered in 2009 in fields in West Miami-Dade County, most near the C-9 area. Police have made five arrests, including an owner and worker at a C-9 ranch in November after they sold horse meat to an undercover officer. In November, the Miami-Dade Commission also passed a resolution urging a crackdown on horse slaughters.

http://www.miamiherald.com/459/story/1420731.html