USA House of Reps Passes Horse Slaughter Ban

[Chicagoland]

If anyone cares, our US House just passed a ban on horse slaughter which many of us are very very happy about. We don't eat our horses here and the plants are built for cattle and inhumane for horses as their long neck allows them to evade the bullet (much grossness ensues...). Regardless, with any luck the people of France, Belgium, Italy and Japan won't be eating our pets and athletes any more..... Considering how filled with carcinogens our horses are, why they ever would eat them boggles my mind... Cheers

 

[Lobelia_Overhill]

Hurrah!!

 

[dieseldog]

I didn't think this bill was supported by all your welfare groups as it now means you will have increased horse neglect due to unwanted, lame animals etc being dumped mistreated etc. Perhaps they should have passed a bill to improve the slaughterhouses.

 

[flohelf]

Unfortunately, the French eat horsemeat (hate them for it

) the bastards

and I can't imagine French parliament ever passing a bill against it

Glad it did pass in the US though...

 

[Tia]

You hit the nail on the head Diesel.

What a nightmare it is going to be. I expect some people will take matters into their own hands and will go back to the backyard slaughterings again....... or shipping them thousands of miles to a Canadian slaughterhouse

.

Legislation like this happening in Canada has always been a concern of mine - hopefully whatever happens within the law for horses in Canada will be better thought out than this bill in the States.

This is a bleak day for horse welfare, I fear.

 

[Mithras]

[ QUOTE ]
Regardless, with any luck the people of France, Belgium, Italy and Japan won't be eating our pets and athletes any more..... Considering how filled with carcinogens our horses are, why they ever would eat them boggles my mind... Cheers

[/ QUOTE ]

I would never even contemplate eating horse meat, hardly eat meat at all but I don't believe in interfering with other country's customs and practices simply because they sound alien. There are many odd customs in the US as well. e.g. the Grindalaup in the Faeroe Islands and the annual gannet hunt still carried out by some men from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides on St Kilda. These both preserve ancient ways of life and skills which were once necessary to survive in these marginal lands not that long ago. I think it tragic if the human race is to lose all these ancient skills for surivival just because they become an easy target for animal rights activists while other more widespread cruel practices are ignored, such as battery and factory farming.

A lot of people in France I am sure cannot understand why hamburgers are so popular in the States and how people can basically live on them!

 

[dieseldog]

It does look like the US has now created the problems faced by Eastern European horses being shipped 1000s of miles to be slaughtered, as theirs will be going to Canada and Mexico - or even further south.

Do people breed horses soley for meat in the States? If not where were the horses coming from that were supplying the slaughterhouses?

 

[Tia]

[ QUOTE ]
Do people breed horses soley for meat in the States? If not where were the horses coming from that were supplying the slaughterhouses?

[/ QUOTE ]

Pretty much.....although often inadvertantly! So many crud horses being bred ...... just because they can! Then we end up with a pile of crud offspring who are useless for almost everything but meat. I don't know about the States, although I would assume this has gone on there too, but here in Canada there are a number of farms where horses are indeed bred purely for meat......we also have PMU; a percentage of the foals born are destined for the dinner plate too.

 

[dieseldog]

I just wondered if people farm them like cattle. Understand poor quality animals getting slaughtered, where are they going to go now? But if people are raising horses purely for meat why aren't they breeding them better? They always look so skinny in the photos, you'd have thought you would have the equivalent of 'beef' horses by now.

Whats PMU?

 

[Dovorian]

Forgive my ignorance, but do you have restrictions in the US which mean people are virtually forced to send their animals to approved slaughterhouses rather then bury at home/cremate/other?

In this regard I'm not thinking for horses whcih are raised for meat but simply as you say, our pets and athletes?

 

[Tia]

Yes there are farms who have horses purely for meat - they are called Feedlots. Skinny horses are bought at auctions and taken to the Feedlots where they are put on super-concentrated feed and once up to weight they are either slaughtered or shipped alive to Japan and Europe.

PMU is where they take the urine from pregnant mares to make HRT for older ladies who are going through the Change. So many synthetic drugs have been found to be just as effective, and whatwith public outcry these PMU farms are certainly on their last legs now.....thank god!

 

[Lobelia_Overhill]

I was on PMU tablets once, as soon as I found out I went to the doc and screamed at him... he thought it was funny bastid

Going by the fuss kicked up on US equestrian message boards and online games, slaughterhouses in the US are just about the only way people dispose of horses of any sort, athletes, pets, kids ponies, also rans off the track, and any not up to scratch competition types. I've seen dozens of sigline images begging to "stop the slaughter" with poems about foals being ripped away from their mothers and competition horses that weren't 'good enough'...

 

[GTs]

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't think this bill was supported by all your welfare groups as it now means you will have increased horse neglect due to unwanted, lame animals etc being dumped mistreated etc. Perhaps they should have passed a bill to improve the slaughterhouses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very well said - we have approved a bill that will cause more suffering! If you think 2 days in a hot trailer, and a painful death is bed - imagine 2 years of foundering!!!

 

[Chicagoland]

WHOA,

I should have clarified this when I posted the 1st time.

In the USA, all horses that go to slaughter are either pets, athletes, working (like Amish), or too young to do anything. Most of the ones I see going from the auction to slaughter are quarter horses, arabians, standardbreds, used up Amish buggy horses(and you should see what a concrete road does too an Amish buggy horse by age 10...), weanlings and yearlings, TB's and whatever is navicular, older, used up.

We do not have meat horse breeding here. The reason the equine slaughter here is so very scary is that there is no waiting period. The slaughter workers are often Mexican immigrants who are paid for speed. I have a slaughter plant here, 1 hour from Chicago. If I go to work in the morning at 8, someone can pick my horse from its paddock at 9, have it at the plant at 10 and my horse will be packaged and frozen by noon. Naturally, since one doesn't get home till 6, one doesn't report the theft till then. It is an easy, unprosecutable crime because by noon there is no evidence left - and no, our law enforcement isn't going to sort through 80 chunks of bloody hide trying to see if you recognize any of it. What other crime involves the death of a family member and or valuable asset and can't even be prosecuted? If you add up the $500 US per month to keep my mare for the past 20 years and the vet, trainer, show, shoe & other costs, it makes one hell of an unprosecutable financial loss emotions aside.

The plants do not require any paperwork except a coggins certificate which any child can forge. There have been extensive studies done in California where slaughter plants were closed and there was no increase in abuse but there was a decrease in theft..... I will check to see if this bill prevents the export of animals to Mexico and Canada - I certainly hope so. Ironically, the Thoroughbred people are ANTI slaughter and are ramping up financially to fund racehorse retirement farms to absorb their share of the overbreeding. I wish the quarter horse people would do the same as they are responsible for so much of the bad overbreeding/ navicular/ http stuff. Arabians went out of style in the late 80's and many were slaughtered in the late 80's early 90's so you don't see them very often anymore. Our new overbreed population of nice meaty warmbloods which are ridden,competed, drugged and crippled and used up would probably be the biggest business in the future.

Anyone who can afford to pay $300.00 per month to keep a horse should be able to pay the vet $150.00 to put it to sleep and the $300.00 to haul the body away.

Regardless, 99% of US horses have been wormed and all of our wormer specifically says on the package "not for use in animals intended for human consumption". I bet the French and Japanese don't know about that......

 

[Chicagoland]

The bill does BAN domestic and international transportation of horses for slaughter! Yeah. So no shipping them to Canada or Mexico....


By the way, I am not a vegan or anti in case you wondered. I have just seen too much 1st hand to support horse slaughter here.

Much love & Kisses to my UK cousins,

Chicagoland

 

[Chicagoland]

Here in the US we do not have restrictions on cremation, or sending a corpse to a rendering plant but it costs about $160 US to have the vet euthanize and cremation can be $ 1000 or more US and local laws might limit where you are allowed to bury. It depends on where you are ( 50 states, 50 different rules....).

People are just too cheap to pay to end a life properly when they can collect $100.00 from an auction or dealer instead of paying $600.00 to do the right thing.

Americans do not breed horses deliberately for meat. I know they have "meat ponies" in Spain, but not here. They are all someones pet or former athlete or just babies.

 

[Chicagoland]

Dieseldog,

Canada didn't specify that Feedlots are filled with former pets, workers and athletes but not with horses bred like cattle to be meat. When feedlot buyers buy at auction, they are buying someones former pet or athlete. In our area, we do not have feedlots. They go straight from show ring to auction pen to slaughter.....

PMU horses are a big/ were a big Canadian agricultural business. They are mares, kept pregnant & foaling to produce hormones for human females. They are kept in straight stalls with urine collection bags attached to pull the hormones out. Premarin a hugely successful estrogen replacement drug for women was made from the mares urine. Estrogen replacement is now less popular and lots of PMU horses have been slaughtered. I don't know how much is left up there now. Canada maybe makes meat horses on purpose but the US does not! Our quarter horses are nice and beefy however and even have heads like cows lately.....

 

[GTs]

[ QUOTE ]
In the USA, all horses that go to slaughter are either pets, athletes, working (like Amish), or too young to do anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

Incorrect, I think you will find that a large percent of horses slaughtered are Mustangs.

[ QUOTE ]
I have a slaughter plant here, 1 hour from Chicago. If I go to work in the morning at 8, someone can pick my horse from its paddock at 9, have it at the plant at 10 and my horse will be packaged and frozen by noon.

[/ QUOTE ]

So the bill is not about protecting horses, but your investment? It seems like your motives are selfserving, and not for the greater good. Seems a very common trend here in the US, unfortunately.

[ QUOTE ]
the Thoroughbred people are ANTI slaughter and are ramping up financially to fund racehorse retirement farms to absorb their share of the overbreeding.

[/ QUOTE ]

It seems like only a few owners have chimmed in on this bill - not the NTRA, Jocket Club or any other organization with the exception of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.

 

[suebingham]

This is a topic of significant interest to me as an adopter of two U.S. Bureau of Land Management mustang yearlings in 2001. We DO have too many horses in the U.S. -- no doubt about it.

Despite the fact that my two totally captured my heart -- mare is still with me and will be for life; little gelding is now happily employed at a local riding stable, I think I kinda come down on the side of more humane methods of slaughter. We have been in the grip of an epic drought (fires, no forage, etc.) for almost 10 years and if people could see the suffering these animals (and other native species, as well) endure through no fault of their own, they might see the ban as an "easy" answer but not necessarily the "right" answer.
Of course -- it would also be GREAT if our backyard hobbiests quit breeding their marginal mares (you should see some of the nags can get papers for a couple of our home grown breeds!) and more of us focused on finding homes for wild ones. As soon as I can get a USB cable for my camera, I'll post some pictures of my lil' gal and I suspect those of you who are partial to cobs, won't think she's too bad.

 

[GTs]

I love mustangs - the ones I have ridden have been ace.