The aim of the examination was to show the most frequent reasons for emergency slaughter of horses. The analysis of the data showed that in the country slaughterhouses 81% of horses and in the meat exporting abattoirs 21% of horses were slaughtered because of poor health condition. The most frequent reasons of the emergency slaughter were the conditions following the abnormal feeding and the excessive draft exploitation of the horses (e.g. break age of the bones) but not infectious or parasitic diseases. In the majority of the cases the meat of these horses was approved for human consumption.