My little BLM guy, who is likely to live out his days being ridden 5-6 times a year whether he needs it or not. The white mark on his neck is the freeze brand. He gets scared riding in an arena, but is quite happy to go out on a trail with the big horses:
Happy that you have a BLM mustang. Hope your friends and neighbors do too. Wish I could have one, but I live in an apartment where cats are barely tolerated.
I belong to and support wild horse preservation efforts. This organization does manage to protect at least some of these lovely and endangered animals: http://wildhorsepreservation.org
Looks to me like the state governments and or the people within the state have the constitutional right to make these decisions, not the feds. The land needs to be returned to the states and the BLM dissolved.
I don’t know your circle of horse friends or where you live, but over 75% of the horse people we know know in Oklahoma are AGAINST horse slaughter, and AGAINST opening horse slaughter houses in the U.S.A., and AGAINST horses for food.
Other than the obvious humane-related issues (e.g like eating your pet dog or cat when they pass on), sending horses to slaughter for food is nuts, as they are not raised for consumption, and can have all sorts of chemicals, antibiotics, etc. in them that are prohibited in cattle, dairy cows, poultry, swine, etc.; and wild horses can harbor diseases that are not present in normal food animals. Just unsafe as heck.
There is a horse breeding problem in the country; not a problem that will be solved by indiscriminate slaughter of these animals.
Disclaimer: we own 5 horses, and manage a horse boarding facility with over 60 board horses.