Posted on 03/20/2013 4:00:28 PM PDT by ilovesarah2012
About eight miles outside of Roswell, N.M., a shuttered cattle farm is getting ready to reopen its doors. Only this time, the Valley Meat Co. won’t be killing cows. It hopes to be the first U.S. farm to start slaughtering horses for human consumption.
Not far behind could be plants in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma.
Across the country, companies are applying for permits with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to kill horses for food – a practice Congress ended in 2007. The measure to stop the slaughters, though, lapsed in 2011 and now companies are clamoring to get back into the game.
“We’re getting ready,” Valley Meat Co. attorney A. Blair Dunn, told FoxNews.com.
But it hasn’t been an easy road, with public opposition still strong to the idea of horse-slaughter resuming in the U.S., though the current plans would be geared toward exporting the meat to other countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It must have been the preceding post (about chickens) that had me read, "Cluck Steak".
:)
You’ve posted some good information here. :-)
This is going to make Bo Derek very angry.
that is not good.
Yah... I think the EU is just now finding out that some of their assumptions about American horsemeat have been just plain wrong.
Lots of people really excited about opening up these new plants... But in light of the recent horse meat scandal in Europe, including reports of tainted meat and little to no control of horse medications here in the US.... I just can’t see why anyone would think this is a money maker.
Some of these sites say they are closed beef plants. A butcher-ready beef is worth three times what a butchered horse is worth. If you can’t make it in beef, what makes you think horse butchering is going to make you all kinds of easy money?
Anyone want lots of vats of ground horse meat sitting around in this country looking for a buyer?
And if that’s not chilling on the idea... there are bills in the house and senate to stop it all together. No idea whether they’ll pass this time, but if not now, they’ll run it again next session or the next... Who would invest in horse slaughter in this country right now with that climate? It just doesn’t make any sense.
Regulations effective in July will effectively ban the import to the EU of any horse meat that does not have lifetime tracking of medications... a “Passport” issued for each horse - with ID microchip - that indicates if they are on a track for the food chain or are pets. Just how likely is that to catch on here?
The EU is the market... If the EU isn’t buying what these plants produce, who is?
There are too many resources available to horse owners to make that a reasonable excuse. They're just not that hard to find.
Actually hundreds..thousands of horses are being fed here...and never given any vet service, what so ever.
Which ones?
Our government ought to let us make meat out of the animals we own.
Nuff said.
You actually can, FWIW. You just can't sell it to someone else without USDA inspection.
If you’re talking about BLM feedlots...
I actually agree that the BLM rounding up and holding of mustangs is a terribly misguided idea that needs to stop. What to do with them is a huge issue.
I lose a lot of my horse friends on this issue but I actually have less of a problem with those horses being slaughtered - for pet and animal food. They are not trained and we have no contract with them.
BUT, to be humanely handled, they must be processed where they are.... It’s not hard to bring the equipment to the horses in that case, and would be much kinder, and cheaper, than transporting all these very wild horses somewhere else.
I would allow it, and they can be used till the massive backlog is processed, but then... no more roundups. No more holding pens.
Speaking for the States of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Wisconsin, your statement borders on ignorance.
I know there are always at least two sides to every argument and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I don’t want horses to starve to death but I doubt it’s the starving, sick horses going to the slaughterhouse. If they lose money, will Obama bail them out? I don’t know what the answer is.
Since when is horse ownership some kind of widespread unwanted affliction of the poor? Not where I am, not anywhere. Horses are a hobby and a luxury.
I’d sympathize if the people selling horses to slaughter were all poor, and never did it again.... truth is, they’re getting rid of some to make room for more. They’re culling the slow, lame and old ones so they can get new ones... not saving themselves from some unfair burden unwittingly thrust upon them.
Well, duh. I was talking about the ones I've seen standing in three feet of manure.
Believe what you want, but I've seen it ~
If horses are being neglected, they are being neglected because people are lazy and don’t give a crap. Because if people wanted to have them put down, they could, for a few hundred bucks, at most.
If they wanted to slaughter them they could do that today.
They don’t because some people suck. Not because legalizing slaughter in this country would be doing horses some kind of new favor previously unavailable to them.
Above ^.
Lazy people who neglect horses today will neglect horses tomorrow or with a slaughter plant next door. Slaughter has zero effect on neglect.
Saying they have no choice is like saying people have no choice.
People do have choices.
There should be a slaughterhouse in every State, so that we need not have to ship them to Mexico or Canada to prove to ourselves how "humane" we are.
I’ll accept your prices. Why they have four or five horses to dispose of that have no other value is not my doing. If they were mine, I know what I’d do.
If we wanted to be humane, we’d stop allowing their transport to Mexico or Canada.
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