Exports of horses for slaughter surge

Fort Worth Star Telegram ^ | Oct 4, 2007 | from wire reports

[tuffydoodle]

A surge in exports of unwanted horses across the border for slaughter has horrified animal-welfare advocates, who say they will redouble efforts for a law to ban shipments of horses to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses.

Court rulings this year closed the only three American horse-slaughter plants, including facilities in Fort Worth and Kaufman.

Since January, so-called killer buyers who purchase unwanted horses at auctions have shipped 48,000 horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. U.S. exports to Mexican slaughterhouses are up by 369 percent, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

On Sunday, the Express-News chronicled the crude method used to kill horses at a plant in Juarez, Mexico, where workers stab horses in the spine until they are disabled.

The horses are then strung up from a hind leg, and their throats are slit.

The grim story prompted outrage from activists and congressmen who have tried to ban slaughter through the Horse Protection Act.

"If members of Congress saw these photos and read the story, I think we'd get some immediate action," said U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, a horse-slaughter opponent.

The Humane Society of the United States criticized the Texas Department of Agriculture for allowing companies to use taxpayer-funded pens to help get the horses to slaughter.

The group planned to hold a news conference today to show video collected at the pens and at a Ciudad Juarez slaughter plant. It is pushing for a national ban on the shipment or export of horses for slaughter.

More than 100,000 U.S. horses were slaughtered last year for overseas consumption, according to government figures.

About 15,000 fewer horses overall have been slaughtered this year, but exports to the foreign slaughterhouses are way up.

In August, the House passed a $91 billion farm and nutrition spending bill that would make it illegal to transport or export horses for human consumption. The Senate has not voted on its version of the bill.

Another Senate bill protecting horses from slaughter was approved in committee, and a House version is pending in committee.

"The state should have absolutely no role in facilitating slaughter given the existence of a statute that forbids the practice," said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States.

Beverly Boyd, spokeswoman for the agriculture department, said the agency's pens are a rest stop for animals headed to Mexico and South America.

She said the agency is required by law to accept all animals as long as state and federal laws and the department's pen policies are followed.

Animals eat, drink and rest at the pens after traveling hundreds of miles.

They also are examined by Mexican veterinarians before being shipped south. The agency has several pens along the border for livestock being exported to Mexico.

"A lot of these animals going into Mexico or Canada have traveled a long distance. You don't want them on the trucks all the time," Boyd said.

A 1949 Texas law bans the sale or possession of horse meat for human consumption or transferring horse meat so it can be sold for human consumption.

The law doesn't address live animals. The Humane Society used that state law to successfully sue for the shutdown of a Beltex Corp. slaughter plant in Fort Worth and a Dallas Crown plant in Kaufman.

Sunday's newspaper report documented conditions at a municipal plant in Juarez, where horses were hacked to death with knives, rather than stunned with the captive bolt guns that were common at the U.S. horse-slaughter plants. The puntilla method appears to be standard at older slaughterhouses throughout Mexico.

Those who lobbied unsuccessfully to keep horse-slaughter plants open in the U.S. say they warned their opponents that horses would suffer far more if the plants were closed and the animals were exported.

About four to six trucks carrying about 30 horses each were arriving at the state pens, said Kathy Milani, the Humane Society of the United States' vice president for investigations and video.

Beltex Corp. was delivering the loads. Beltex also runs a Panhandle feedlot in Morton, about 370 miles west of Fort Worth. Truck drivers also told the animal protection group's employees that they had driven from Morton.

Beltex did not respond to phone messages requesting comment.

This report includes material from the San Antonio Express-News and The Associated Press.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I knew when Bo Derek and her friends were getting the slaughterhouses closed, it wasn't going to stop the horses from being killed ... it will just happen somewhere else.

Someone needs to ask the activists what they think is the appropriate end for a horse that no longer has a home. I would be interested in their answer. Fact is that they don't want them killed at all and they have no proposal to care for them instead.

In the southeast, folks are turning horses out on the countryside to fend for themselves because an old or unwanted horse can no longer be taken to slaughter. The same may be happening in other parts of the country, or the old SSS rule is being observed. It is a tough subject and I wish them well in finding the answers.

[kinghorse]

I used this story to beat over the heads of some liberals last night. I think the horses were better off before Paco got hold of them. After about the 4th knife plunge the horse is heard to say thanks liberals but could I have the shock please. idiots. utter hopeless idiots. Ann Coulter’s new book title is it.

[kinghorse]

As I explained to pretty vacant heads, it comes down to either outlaw horse ownership or accept the fact the animal is a money pit in the best of times. Common sense dictates but then we became untethered from common sense some time ago. As I explained to the little pointy heads, you can’t force someone to take a loss. They will find a way to get out of it. Either trust our own to take care of our own or just outlaw it and watch necessity find a way.

[Slump Tester]

There's gotta be a happy medium. My girlfriend is heavily involved in Saddlebred rescue, and I ask her the same thing. The terrible thing is that the slaughterhouses are just as messed up and slipshod as every thing else is now days.

Death isn't always instantaneous or humane. A 44 magnum is too messy and expensive. They basically shoot them in the forehead with a pneumatic bolt. It doesn't always work right, but that's ok, it's still on the conveyor. That 44 magnum that would finish the job right is still expensive, and it's gonna die now anyhow.

She knows of mares that have given birth at the slaughterhouse. (A bonus - Europeans pay big bucks for children's portions.)

Why can't they at least die humanely? (The horses, not the Europeans.)

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I have no problem with a slaughterhouse having to meet requirements for a humane kill. If the activist horse lovers had worked as hard for that result as they did to have the slaughterhouses closed, people would still have jobs and the horses would die humanely.

Like activists often do ... they did not think about the unintended consequences of their actions. I suppose that they thought all horses were going to prance around, fat and happy, in flowered meadows just as soon as they stopped the legal slaughter and export.

The current results are very sad.

[tuffydoodle]

Agreed. Banning horse slaughter in the country was a BAD idea. I have argued on other threads that this was gonna happen but the animal rights advocates assured me that it wouldn’t.

[Slump Tester]

As far as I know, all her organization does is find homes for many horses that are headed there.

[org.whodat]

The same may be happening in other parts of the country, or the old SSS rule is being observed. It is a tough subject and I wish them well in finding the answers.

There is a story about this and how little people are getting for their old horses at the Kingsport horse auction. Check out the Bristol Tennessee/virginia, newspaper for last sunday.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

That is a commendable thing for a group to do ... please do not interpret my comments as being directed at those who truly do something worthwhile, like connecting someone who desires to take care of an animal with an animal that needs to be cared for.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

A couple of months ago, my wife and I and some of my cousins were visiting our distant Italian relatives in Lombardy. The first course of every meal is various processed meats--salame, bresaole, mortadella, etc. One slice each of four or five different meats on your plate. (Incidentally, every house I visited in Italy had a deli-style meat slicer.) One time, at my cousin Giacomo's house, there was a darker meat on the plate among the other slices. We all ate it, and after that course I was asking what each one was. You probably see where this is going.

The dark one was horse, of course. (Apologies to Mr. Ed). This led to a whole conversation in which I explained that, to most Americans, the idea of eating horse was liking eating dog, and their explaining that horse is supposed to be a healthy meat, high in iron and good for anemics. It commands a premium price over there. On the other hand, they were shocked and fascinated to learn that I've eaten bison meat any number of times.

By the way, it tasted pretty much like beef (the horse, that is).

[nathanbedford]

Jane Fonda makes a movie called the China Syndrome and it becomes virtually impossible thereafter to build atomic energy plants and so we remain in thrall to Islamists.

Walt Disney makes a movie called, "Bambi" and the whole world anthropomorphizes deer to the point where we have them jumping not only through the windshields of our cars at 60 miles an hour but through the picture windows of our homes.

A book is written called, "Black Beauty" and generations of do-gooders damn near kill horses with their misguided but good intentions. Some years ago in New York City the city fathers nearly passed an ordinance requiring the stable for the hacks and carriage horses in Central Park to be heated!

Let me establish my credentials: I have owned horses all my adult life, I presently own four here in Germany. I have Fox hunted for many years and yesterday (the German national holiday for reunification) my son competed in a tournament.

I love horses but I despise sentimentality.

There is a venerable tradition in Munich (now moved out of town) called the Pferdemarkt. Since time immemorial horses have been bought sold and traded on the first Saturday of every month. It is a tradition at this horse market to buy a sausage at the booths at the end of the hall where you can gaze out upon the rows of horses. The sausage you are eating is made of horse meat.

To all things there is a season and there comes a time when even the noblest of these creatures must die. In return for our dominion over them, we owe them the responsibility to see that their passing is humane. It is not our responsibility to refrain from eating horsemeat, or even to refrain from feeding the meat of dead horses to our dogs. In my view, to do otherwise would be to act as poor stewards.

It seems to me that the job of the do-gooder is to see to it that horse slaughter is is humane as it can possibly be. But to deny the slaughter itself is about as absurd as would be proscribing slaughter of beef. What business is it of the state whether or not I choose to eat horsemeat or feed it to my dog? What am I supposed to do with my aged horse if not slaughter him humanely?

This misguided policy in practice visits misery unnecessarily on so many horses. Worse, it could very well lead to the destruction of the race because obviously no one will bring horses into the world if they cannot ultimately be disposed of. The irony is, if we cannot kill them we cannot let them have birth.

[muawiyah]

Lot of those Congresscritters like to see children slaughtered in the womb so why would they care one way or the other about increasing the suffering of horses.

[lepton]

"If members of Congress saw these photos and read the story, I think we'd get some immediate action,"

I think it should. The practice should be relegalized in the U.S. Only then can we ensure that the slaughter of horses raised in the U.S. is competent.

[vetvetdoug]

Here in Mississippi I have seen a new phenomenon of cruelty. The horse owners that can't sell their old horses hold them off food for a week or longer and let them graze...then they feed them about ten pounds of grain...the result is a lethal colic. Unfortunately, it is happening all over the country and the liberals can't prove a thing and yet its as cruel and inhumane as one can get...

This is the law of unintended consequences, a law or national policy made by tree hugging animal rights activists that haven't a clue on reality.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Anyone remember back in 1962 when Caroline Kennedy got a pony and protesters demanded the family “Clothe Your Horse”!

The protesters started a group demanding clothes for animals and within a few weeks they had over 35000 people sign up. It was later found Vaughn Meader started the group as a joke.

[coydog]

Not to mention all the other horrible ways of disposing of a horse when the law doesn’t allow humane, inexpensive alternatives... plastic-bag suffocation, electrocution, poisoning, etc. Look for these incidences to shoot up once these laws are in effect. And there’s always old, reliable “Shoot, shovel and shut up”. If a horse is pushed over a cliff or shot in the forest, does anyone hear?

[Texas Mulerider]

The pneumatic bolt is humane compared to the Mexican method. A thread yesterday described how American horses, now being exported to Mexico for slaughter, are stabbed in the spine with a “small knife” until it falls down, paralyzed. Then the horse is hoisted up by its rear legs and its throat slit, so it can bleed out. One especially incompetent Mexican had to stab one terrified mare in the back 10 times before she fell.

I’m not opposed to humane slaughter when necessary, but I found myself thinking how pleasant it would be to use a bolt gun on that particular Mexican butcher.

[NVDave]

They didn’t think about the unintended consequences because they weren’t thinking about them at all.

All they could think about was stopping *any* mustang from being slaughtered in the US and shipped to the EU or south American as meat. That’s all they thought about.

As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: I’ve been in meetings here in Nevada that have had these horse-besotted women in attendance. There isn’t a coherent, logical thought emanating from any of them. They are driven by pure emotion.

They are the poster girls for the repeal for the 19th Amendment.