Horses to the slaughter

[babylonsister]

Horses to the slaughter

U.S. horses are meeting gruesome ends abroad, while the debate rages on: Are horses 1,500 pounds of food or friend?

By Megan Wilde
Pages 1 2

AP Photo/Nate Jenkins

Horses are ushered into an auction ring in Rushville, Neb. Many of them will be sold and slaughtered abroad for meat.


June 30, 2009 | EL PASO, Texas -- On the dusty outskirts of this border city, neighbored by truck stops and desert scrub, hundreds of horses mill around a sprawling grid of pens at the Rio Grand Classic horse auction. Inside the metal sale barn, a cowboy rides a handsome palomino into the show ring, and the auctioneer's chant crescendos as the price rises into the thousands. But the bidding on some horses is less enthusiastic. These horses -- plump young pintos, old red roans, a scrawny mare and her wobbly-legged foal -- dart around the show ring nervously before selling for a few hundred dollars or less. Then they're shuffled into the "kill pen," a set of crowded corrals at the edge of the auction property. There, all but the foal are marked with green U.S. Department of Agriculture tags that designate horses bought for slaughter, most likely in Mexico, where the meat is consumed and sold abroad.

Not many people realize slaughtering horses for meat has been big business in the U.S. for generations. Yet in recent decades, public sentiment, matched by state and local laws, has risen against the practice, and in 2007 the last three U.S. horse slaughterhouses were shuttered. Since 2005, Congress has also withheld U.S. Department of Agriculture funding for horse-meat inspections to prevent new abattoirs from opening in states where horse slaughter is still legal. No federal law, though, forbids U.S. horses from being sent to slaughterhouses across the border. Which is exactly what has been happening in the two years since horse slaughter stopped here. The number killed in Canada and Mexico doubled to 49,000 in 2007 and rose to more than 72,000 last year, according to trade data.

Sending horses to slaughter in Mexico and Canada has had grisly consequences. They are hauled in crowded trailers as far as 1,000 miles from auctions and feedlots to abattoirs across the border. Many end up in unregulated slaughterhouses, where they are sometimes paralyzed with knife stabs in their backs, leaving them conscious as their throats are slit.

Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses, which export meat to Europe, are supposed to uphold horse-welfare standards similar to U.S. rules. Those mandate that horses be stunned -- rendered unconscious, typically with a captive-bolt gun, which jabs a rod into a horse's brain -- before they are killed. But many horses face a crueler fate over the border. Nicholas Dodman, a Tufts University veterinary behaviorist, says some Canadian slaughterhouses break every rule in the book. He says videos taken by an animal-welfare group and secret cameras in a Canadian abattoir show horses watching other horses being killed, a downed horse being beaten and some horses left conscious when killed.

more...

http://www.salon.com/env/feature/2009/06/30/horse_slaughter/

[JonQ]

1. We could end the ban

so they are slaughtered here, then the US could actually regulate what happens.

[northernlights]

2. or breeders could stop overbreeding horses

for which there is no market. Many big "show" breeders use slaughter as part of their "business" plan to get rid of their disasters instead of not breeding disasters to begin with. And many dream-eyed backyard breeders don't have the knowledge, the money or a clue and shouldn't be encouraged to breed either.

And breed organizations could stop encouraging the breeding of "halter" horses that are unfit for riding, with better breed standards that match good working horses. Such as not rewarding horses with massive muscle and size supported by insufficient bone and feet, or difficult temperaments that look "flashy" in the halter ring and are too dangerous to ride or drive. Also by banning registration of horses that carry known genetic diseases that will doom their offspring to short, miserable lives, such as HYPP or the disease (I forget it's name) that causes the horse's skin to fall off due to lack of collagen.

Too many horses were bred for too many years by too many breeders who refused to see the handwriting that's been on the wall for a long time. It will take a while to wash out of the system. When breeders have lost enough money breeding horses for which there is no market, then they will stop, and the oversupply will dry up.

[JonQ]

3. Breeding isn't an exact science

even with the best breeders and the best mares/stallion you will occasionally get duds that serve no purpose. What else are they good for?

Besides, what is wrong with eating horse meat? Is it fundamentally different than slaughtering cattle?