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.
I have no objection to horses as food. I probably won’t eat my horses when they die, but neither do I see anything immoral about eating a horse.
Horses who are slaughter can be checked for diseases, just as cattle are.
There isn’t a horse breeding problem. The problem is that horses live 30 years, and the market goes up and down several times in 30 years. My mare was a well-bred Arabian. In 2001, there was an excellent market. She comes from good CMK lines. But by 2012, I could not have sold her for over $1000. Of course, 5 years from now the market might be back...it probably would already have come back, if we didn’t have an Obama market and Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader.
Heck, a few years ago, beef cattle were being slaughtered due to drought. Now the market for cattle is great.
In any case, the feral mustangs are not being bred for ANY market. There are few natural predators, they are very fertile, and they will reproduce and destroy the range. Once you destroy a desert range, it takes a long time to come back. Therefor, I support either killing them here, or capturing them and sending them off for food. If I can eat a deer, I can eat a horse.
They are not pets.