Stop Horse Slaughter: Our Country’s Dark Secret
• Pets, show ponies, racehorses, draft horses—they’re all ending up at the slaughter house
• “The USDA reports that 92 percent of the horses going to slaughter are good horses in good shape. With new owners, they can live long, healthy lives and even change careers.”
• More than 100,000 horses—pets, show and race horses, carriage horses, and wild horses—end up in slaughterhouses every year.
• Horse rescue groups go to auctions literally to bid for the life of horses against “kill buyers.” Kill buyers look at horses, some with manes still carefully braided by their last owners, and they don’t see pets or individuals; they see meat. Though reports show horse meat can be dangerous for human consumption because of the drugs horses are given over the course of their lifetimes, the meat is sold in countries like France, Italy, Belgium, and Japan. Horses are not raised as food animals but are raised as companions who are taught to trust humans.
The terrifying road to slaughter
• After a horse is bought by a kill buyer, she is shipped to a slaughterhouse in Mexico or Canada. Currently, there are no horse slaughterhouses in the U.S., but the cruel and predatory industry continues to court states in an effort to convince them that slaughter is somehow good for communities and horses.
• Former pets, sensitive dressage horses, and draft horses—all are dragged and whipped into trucks that are built for cattle, who are much shorter, meaning the horses are often horrifically injured on their long heads, necks, and legs. Since the slaughter industry sees these horses as nothing but meat, it doesn’t do anything to keep them from being hurt or traumatized.
• Workers cram as many horses as possible into the trucks. “They mix stallions in with pregnant mares, foals, and older horses, often leading to fights and injuries,” says Valerie Pringle, Equine Protection Specialist for The Humane Society of the United States.
• “And they can be transported in freezing cold or scorching heat, for 24 hours or more with no food or water and no chance to rest or stretch. “Horse slaughter should not exist as a grisly crutch for irresponsible owners and breeders while the majority find humane outcomes for their horses. Sending a horse to an inhumane death at a slaughter plant is not the least expensive way of ending a horse’s life—it is the greediest way.”
The horror of the slaughterhouse
• At the slaughterhouse, a horse is killed in a way that is easiest and quickest for the slaughterhouse worker but most agonizing for her. Investigations from Mexican and Canadian slaughter plants report that horses are stabbed many times in the neck with a “puntilla knife” to sever their spinal cords, leaving them paralyzed and unable to breathe. The horse is then hoisted, bled out, and cut apart, often while still conscious and able to feel everything. Horses fared no better when they were slaughtered in the U.S., according to an investigation by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Slaughter simply cannot be made humane.
• One of the biggest problem of unwanted horses is overbreeding, especially of quarterhorses and thoroughbreds in the U.S. and rounded up wild horses that are not adopted.
• Not only are Premarin mares, foals and stallions bound for slaughter, but it’s estimated that one third of slaughter bound horses are bred for racing. Horses removed from the wild through the BLM program, rodeo horses, camp horses, show horses, “backyard” horses, rental horses and stolen horses are all targets fort he “killer buyers” who act as middlemen for the slaughter houses. Making cat or dog food is not the reason for killing horses, the European and Japanese palate is.
• Some owners sell their horse to slaughter because they think that euthanasia is too expensive. In fact, it costs approximately $225–roughly one month’s keep for a horse. Or they may not know what to do with the body. But in many states there are programs to help owners dispose of the remains or cover the cost of euthanasia.
• Of the 6,900,000 estimated horse population in the U.S. less than 1% of horses are slaughtered or “processed”. In addition, if horse slaughter is banned, horse theft will be almost eliminated, breeders will be more selective in how many horses are bred each year, PMU farms will reduce the number of mares bred, or individuals who have horses that can no longer be used for rodeos, horse racing, etc. would have to take responsibility in either finding another home, retire them to a sanctuary or responsibly euthanize them.
• Over 78% of horses slaughtered each year, are our healthy companion animals, foals and wild horses and burros removed from public lands by the BLM (estimated 90% of the wild horses and burros are sent to slaughter concedes Tom Pogacnick, Director of BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program).
We’re fighting to keep slaughterhouses out of the U.S.
• In November, members of the Congressional Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee opened the door to bringing horse slaughter back to the U.S. They approved (and President Barack Obama signed) an agricultural spending bill that authorizes federal funding for horse slaughterhouse inspections by the USDA, for the first time in many years. If federal inspections are funded, slaughterhouses could begin operating again in the U.S.
• “It is really unfortunate that Congress authorized spending to support something that the majority of Americans oppose,” Pringle said. “Polls show that 80 percent of Americans oppose horse slaughter.”
• Fortunately, in June 2012, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment offered by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., to block funding for the slaughterhouse inspection.”Industrial slaughter of horses should not be condoned by the United States Government,” said Rep. Moran.
• Our battle to prevent slaughterhouses from operating in the U.S. ever again continues: The HSUS and other animal welfare groups are working hard to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 2966/S. 1176) which would ban horse slaughterhouses in the U.S and forbid anyone from transporting horses to foreign slaughterhouses. This bill has received broad bipartisan support and continues to gain co-sponsors, as the threat of horse slaughter returning to our backyards becomes real.