URGENT: Stop Horse Slaughter

https://community.hsus.org/campaign/sweeney_amendment/kw3xkn2155txje? ^

[Theresawithanh]

Sorry to sound cruel, but this doesn't trip my give a rip meter. There are so many more uses of our tax dollars to be concerned about, and horse meat is a commodity, to me, not too much different from tax dollars we spend on other products we market throughout the world.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

If God didn't want us eating animals, he wouldn't have made them out of meat.

[Atheist_Canadian_Conservative]

How are your tax dollars being used to promote the slaughter exactly?

[wideawake]

There are more important things on my political agenda than frogs eating horses.

[Larry Lucido]

Easy solution. Buy the horses and feed them yourself.

[ktvaughn]

You know what--you either support the culture of life or you don't. In this country horses and dogs are different from cows and chickens. They just are. Plus our government is spending our money to inspect them, for foreign markets, it's just wrong. We don't have enough to do inspecting our own food for our own people?

[BurbankKarl]

Actually, with beef prices so high, I think the butchering will help with selections at the local grocer.

[colorcountry]

There is a place for all of Gods creatures.............right beside the potatoes and gravy.

[muir_redwoods]

"Stop Horse Slaughter"

Why? You sure can't eat them whole.

[ktvaughn]

feh--I give up.

[Atheist_Canadian_Conservative]

There is a place for all of Gods creatures.............right beside the potatoes and gravy.

Sometimes the pile is too high to add any more though... :(

[WinOne4TheGipper]

Since when did the "culture of life" apply to animals? You've either got your priorities out of whack or are being sarcastic.

[mommadooo3]

RENO, Nev. -- For the first time in more than a generation, the mustang -- the very symbol of the American West -- can be slaughtered for horsemeat.

In December, Congress repealed the 34-year-old ban on the slaughter of the wild horses that run free across the West. The move has brought a powerful backlash from activists, who want to reinstate full protection for the mustangs.

"It is really a slap in the face to the American people," said Betty Kelly, co-founder of the horse protection group Wild Horse Spirit in Virginia City, Nev.

Acting on behalf of ranchers who say the horses eat forage needed by cattle, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., attached the amendment in December to a spending bill that President Bush signed into law.

It allows for the sale for slaughter of some older and unwanted horses that are captured during the periodic government roundups aimed at reducing the wild population, now estimated at 33,000 across 10 Western states. About 19,000 of the horses are in Nevada.

A bill to reinstate the slaughter ban was introduced in Congress last month.

Responsibilty for rounding up horses on federal land and selling them rests with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which has yet to send any of the animals to slaughter.

BLM officials said the agency is reaching out to animal protection groups and is optimistic that before the summer, it will find new homes for the 8,900 horses and burros that could be subject to slaughter.

"We realize it is a challenge, but we think there are owners out there that would provide the kind of care we are looking for," BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said from Washington, D.C.

The issue has dogged the Interior Department and Congress since Nevada's Velma Johnson, also known as Wild Horse Annie, and a legion of schoolchildren persuaded Congress to outlaw the use of motor vehicles to hunt the mustangs in 1959. That was followed by the Wild Horse and Burro Protection Act of 1971.

Sylvia Fascio, a fifth-generation Nevada horse breeder, said there are too many wild horses roaming the BLM land next to her ranch, and some should be sold for slaughter.

"I enjoy the wild horses. I'm blessed to live out here among them and it's a very romantic thought. But there is such a thing as reality," Fascio said. "Since they can't seem to find homes for all of these horses all of the time, there is only one thing left. There are foreign countries that eat horsemeat. We don't now, but we did during World War II. I see nothing wrong with that."

The fate of the horses is also a question of cultural values, according to Mike Schroeder, a Washington state wildlife biologist. "I think of them more as livestock. But a lot of tribes I work with think of them as wildlife that should not be touched," he said in a speech to a Western Governors Association conference earlier this month.

It is a volatile issue. Scott Freeman, a defense attorney in Reno, defended one of three young men who were accused -- and eventually acquitted of most charges -- in the 1998 shooting deaths of 33 horses on the edge of Reno. The shootings outraged animal protection groups around the world and led to death threats against Freeman.

"I have lots of experience doing homicide cases, but I have never experienced the emotional outburst I did with the horse case," he said. "The rallying cry was for the defenseless animals and that the individuals -- who in my case turned out to be innocent -- should basically be strung up."

Burns said the repeal of the slaughter ban is necessary to manage the herds and protect the range. The measure allows the sale of horses more than 10 years old, as well as any that go unadopted three offerings in a row.

The BLM said it believes the 37,000 free-roaming wild horses and burros on the range are about 9,000 more than natural food supplies can sustain. Its aim is to bring the population down to about 28,000.

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke said the agency already is getting some responses in its effort to find homes for the animals and hopes to find a solution "in a way we feel good about."

[Stentor]

There are more important things on my political agenda than frogs eating horses.

A nightmare way to die; gummed to death by thousands of tiny green amphibians.

[deport]

Excuse me, but this bill is about not using our tax dollars to promote this slaughter.

---

Then who is going to pay for their keep, over grazing, diseases, etc? Isn't the sale of these mustangs based upon population count and only after three attempts to have the animal adopted has failed?...

[TheBattman]

OK - I'll suggest that the slaughter of horses not be promoted with tax dollars - as soon as other animal slaughter is no longer taxpayer promoted (port, beef, chicken, etc.).

Where are these animal rights supporters when it comes down to the need to either sell the animals to slaughter or to adopt them? Why don't they speak with their money and adopt the animals? I would rather these "surplus" horses be slaughtered for food than to just kill them - which is the other alternative if no-one adopts them.

[WinOne4TheGipper]

WOO HOO!!! The FR thread hijack team has done it again!!!

[RicocheT]

Horses, dogs or cake who cares. If someone will buy a can of this stuff abroad, it will help our balance of payments deficit.

[lOKKI]

I have to seriously doubt if there's a big market for "free range" horse meat. I'd tend to believe that the largest portion of the sales would be for domesticated horse, raised for slaughter, as are cows and pigs.

I can't see this as anything but an emotional wedge issue by the PETA folks....
Once you start differentiating between types of animals, where do you draw the line? I've eaten horse, and it's OK. I've never tried dog, but probably would if the opportunity presented itself and the offering looked tasty.

I understand those who don't want to eat horse, but don't believe that there's any moral or ethical reason that others shouldn't be allowed to.

[HairOfTheDog]

I detest and vehemently argue against slaughter of domesticated horses. I have argued here and elsewhere, and always will, that for pet horses who we have used up through work or age, it is a breach of a moral contract with them to send them to a terrifying and inhumane end. They deserve better from us. And that so many people would throw them away like garbage when they're old or broken is to our shame.

And I hate the idea that Mustangs rounded up to provide pasture on public lands for cattle, will now be slaughtered if they are unadaptable.

But we have to recognize that the BLM, and other powers that be, have created an enormous problem. They've been warehousing unadoptable mustangs in holding pens for years now. These horses are not companions, they are wild to semi-wild, and the problem has grown to 10s of thousands of horses, unadoptable, unwanted, and expensive to keep. Something needs to change about the future, but the fact that there is this enormous bubble of mustangs who all need some kind of humane end cannot be ignored. If I had a say, it would be to bring the slaughter to the horses. To haul these horses to distant facilities would be a further cruelty for them.

Or turn them loose.

Ping!