Horse slaughter ban and the law of unintended consequences [View All]

[bklyncowgirl]

As one of the resident horse lover's on DU, I've always been reluctant to support a ban on horse slaughter in the United States. Don't get me wrong, I hate the practice, consider it a betrayal of trust and believe that in the best of all possible worlds every horse's end would be like that of the late, great John Henry, euthanized in the company of friends both human and equine in a place he knows and buried near home.

Unfortunately we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. In the real world there are unwanted horses just as there are unwanted dogs and cats. In the real world there are people who can make money off of selling these unwanted horses to slaughter. I'm pretty sure that in the real world there'd be people who'd be selling unwanted dogs and cats to China if they could get away with it.

For me the most compelling reason to not ban horse slaughter in the U.S. was that I was pretty sure that, since there's money to be made, horses would simply be put on trucks and hauled across the border to Canada or Mexico where the dirty trade would continue without the somewhat mitigating effect of even the haphazardly enforced U.S. regulations.

In Mexico anything goes and what is happening to these animals is even worse than my worst imagination.

Warning, do not click on this link if you have a weak stomach. The article opens with a picture of a man standing above desperately struggling horses in a kill chute preparing to stab them in the spine with a knife in an effort to sever the animal's spinal column in order to paralyze it.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5175642.html

This method of killing which is used on older slaughter houses in Mexico, does not render the animal unconscious. It it fully aware as it is stabbed (often repeatedly because pushing a knife between a large struggling animal's vertebrae is not easily done), collapses to the ground and finally at last hung up and it's throat cut.

This is not about whether or not people should eat horses. This is not about whether horses deserve some special protection. This is not about eating meat. My contention is that no animal of whatever species, whatever it's former relationship to the human race should be treated like this.

This is about greed. The owner of the plant could have fixed his bolt guns but chose not to do so. Hell, he could have used a pistol to shoot the animals before slaughter, but I suppose bullets cost money.

So what to do. Have Congress ban export of slaughter bound horses to Mexico? Try enforcing that one! Put pressure on the Mexican government to have their slaughterhouses clean up their act? Might work if the European Union got in on the act and refused to buy Mexican horsemeat unless the Mexicans enforced humane standards. Reopen U.S. horse killing plants with stronger and more vigorously enforced regulations for humane care and a killing method that is actually designed for horses and not for cattle? Probably a non-starter politically speaking.

Well, folks, what next?