Slaughter is a huge topic right now at the Federal level.
About 1.5% of horses in the USA are slaughtered each year.
This is NOT a number so high we cannot fix with small changes.
Breed only the best. Stand behind our breeds. Require registries to allocate a certain amount of their fees to fund education, better breeding practices and rescue/sanctuaries.
Make riders better qualified and take ALL emphasis off color / marking breeding.
These are NOT impossible steps.
We are anti Slaughter here at Heart of Phoenix Equine Rescue, INC, like most all horse lovers across the nation.
We do not agree with slaughter on multiple levels, and we know statistically, it has NO bearing on neglect numbers.
Young, healthy horses are what fuel the slaughter market, as a rule. I’ve attended auctions and viewed countless meat pens. It doesn’t mean no older, thinner horses go, but if ONLY thin horses were going, the market would tank so much, it would become void by default.
There never were many slaughter plants in our modern age in the USA. Folks didn’t like the plants in their communities, and so the rides for horses headed to slaughter in the USA were long and cruel.
The process here was brutal and inhumane.
Now that is happens over our borders, about as many are slaughtered as before, but it is a step toward ending export of US horses for meat.
Ethically, we cannot process horses in the USA knowing they were not raised to be food for anyone, ever. They receive countless medications and have many products applied in their lives which render their meat dangerous to humans. No matter your feelings on eating them from a stand point of the “Companion” animal argument, you have a hard way to go to say eating or exporting toxic meat is something we can do.
So email your Federal Senators today.
Tell them defund slaughter inspections NOW. Explain to support
the “crucial Udall-Kirk amendment to block tax dollars from going to horse slaughter plants.”
“Taking funding from agricultural industries that feed and employ Americans to reopen inherently cruel, foreign-demand-driven horse slaughter plants puts American agricultural industries at risk and long-term food safety, environment and community health in peril.” (bangordailynews.com)
http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
For WV:
