Unwanted Horses are a Myth...

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Unwanted Horses are a Myth...

I will be going to bed early tonight so I can get up early and head to Austin for a very important Texas Senate Agricultural and Rural Development hearing. They are pondering the economic impact of the closing of horse slaughter plants in 2007 under the guise of being concerned for the welfare of "Unwanted Horses", a term coined by those wishing to reopen the slaughter plants. A single plant is planned for Texas. 

Some fools (who are behind this) think that opening the plants again will somehow improve or benefit the Texas economy. How about a JOBS PLAN? Know how many jobs it will provide? 50! Yes fifty jobs, if that, dead end jobs with no benefits or chance for promotion or enhancement of skills... just the same old mishandling and killing of horses, day in and day out. Anybody interested in a job like that?

The plants would be owned by a Belgian company, fronted by American entrepreneurs who have been pushing this in every state. They are the ones responsible for opening the door to slaughter again by influencing 2 Senators and a Representative (who will profit from this move) and who removed the ban language from the Agricultural part of the Appropriations Bill that Obama signed to keep the country running. 

The product (horse meat) will end up in Europe. Since these horses have not been raised for food and have ingested unknowable amount of substances banned for human consumption, I guess we can call it Unwanted Horse Meat and try to pawn it off on the unsuspecting Europeans!

My testimony to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Affairs

July 10, 2012        

To the Senate Committee on Agriculture & Rural Affairs

“I have come here to oppose the re-opening of slaughter plants for horses in Texas. As far as the economy is concerned, a live horse is worth far more than a dead horse. When you speak of investment you have to consider the long term outcome and return for your investment.

          When someone produces a foal and spends thousands of dollars just to get that foal to an age of trainability for some sort of job, it only makes sense to maintain that horse in the best condition for the rest of its life so it can continue to function. Even older horses that can no longer be ridden or work can serve as a companion horse. Also consider the thousands that are spent keeping the feed store, tack sellers, farrier and veterinarian in business all those years?

It doesn’t make sense to put all the effort and money and training on a horse and then go slaughter it for a couple of hundred dollars when it is no longer at the top of its game. Horses have uses for people at every stage of their lives, including when it comes time to put a horse to sleep. The experience teaches the lessons of life and death.

I have had 12 horses in my possession over the last 15 years. Some I bought, some I rescued. The ones I didn’t keep I found homes for. These horses come to mind when I hear ridiculous phrases like “Unwanted Horses”. There are no unwanted horses. Their owners just haven’t taken much time to market them to the right potential owners. If you were selling a used car you would put out flyers and take an ad in a local publication or the internet, right? So why don’t people do that with horses? They could probably get a lot more money by doing that than dropping it off at the livestock auction.

         

          What kind of Business Model is it to take what someone would consider discards, that is throwaway horses, and try to market them as a delicacy? Even worse are all the young healthy horses off the track and from performance disciplines that are loaded up daily and directly onto the kill buyers truck, without even a finger lifted to try sell or market them for another use. They might be considered even more of a delicacy except for the substances they have ingested which are banned from meat for human consumption.

          Horse slaughter is a sham…

          It is not an industry or a business…

          It is ALCHEMY!

          It is a slight of hand con game that works until people find out what is really going on. If you need to find an example of a similar industry which tried to pass off waste as a valuable protein disguised in other foods, just ask the people who produce PINK SLIME…

Or they USED TO produce it… they are out of business now, and for good reason!” ~

Little Hope for Return of Horse Slaughter in the U.S.

The Texas Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Affairs convened a hearing on July 10, 2012 in Austin, which included a proposal to review the impact of the laws relating to the closure of (2) horse slaughter plants (in 2007) and across the United States, and to analyze the impact on the equine industry and agricultural sector of the Texas economy.

Of the (3) panels of (3) experts each, two panels consisted of Veterinarians, Breed Association Representatives, Animal Health experts, and a former Congressman from another state, which were decidedly pro-slaughter. After giving their testimony, Chairman Estes asked if they had any documentation more recent than 2005 for some statistics and excerpts from the June 2011 GAO Report on Horse Welfare –To Address Unintended Consequences from Cessation of Domestic Slaughter, and if so, to please submit them to the Committee for further consideration. This report referred to and made recommendations regarding the inconsistencies in documentation provided for horses going to slaughter to the Mexican and Canadian plants over the last five years. Those individuals citing the GAO report neglected to include the very last sentence of the recommendations in the report which states:

“Alternatively, Congress may wish to consider instituting an explicit ban on the domestic slaughter of horses and export of U.S. horses intended for slaughter in foreign countries.”

The third panel consisted of (3) horse advocates including our own Paula Bacon, former Mayor of Kaufman, Texas, the location of the last horse slaughter plant in Texas, and Jerry Finch of Habitat for Horses, a large horse rescue in the Galveston area, which has been responsible for rescuing thousands of horses through law enforcement seizures over the last 15 years.

Mayor Kaufman testified about the economic and environmental damage that a horse plant does to a location, including blood backing up in sewers, piles of stinking offal on the site, and a severe drop in property values because of the undesirable image. Because the plants are owned by a foreign company, they managed to avoid paying taxes for years and bankrupted the town with lawsuits when the town tried to collect fines for damage to their environment.

Mr. Finch testified about the “Myth of Unwanted Horses”, those that are dumped in numbers in the desert, which turned out to be the sick, lame and injured horses that the Mexican plant feedlots rejected when presented for slaughter, with the slaughter sticker still attached to their rumps!

He also pointed out that as of July 31, 2013, the European Union will no longer accept meat from horses without documentation equal to their required passport. That means that Europeans (the end market for horse meat) will no longer be eating old, sick lame and unwanted horses.

The horses actually desired for slaughter are healthy horses between the ages of 5 and 15. Thus far they have not had the documentation which is required for food animals, that is, a history of everything they have ingested and been inoculated with from birth to death.

Those in favor of horse slaughter have only one option at this point. That is to start raising horses immediately, specifically for food, just as you would with cattle or sheep. At the earliest, any horse born today would be ready for slaughter in two years time (July 2014) in order to have enough meat on it for slaughter. And if that horse has an injury, it cannot be given Bute (and a long list of other substances) for relief or it will be disqualified from the food chain.

When kill buyers are only willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars for a horse bound for slaughter, it doesn’t make economic sense to feed and maintain it for two years for that small amount, especially considering the cost of feed and hay due to the long term drought which half the country is experiencing.

Planning horse slaughter facilities at this time is premature. I would like to think that Texas citizens and the American public can think of far more important things to spend tax dollars on than setting aside $5 million a year to pay USDA Inspectors to monitor horse slaughter plants at this time.

If you agree, then support the Moran Amendment to REINSTATE the LANGUAGE TO DEFUND USDA INSPECTIONS for horse slaughter plants in the Agricultural portion of the Appropriations Bill being considered in Congress right now.