Why is there still horse slaughter in the U.S.?

Question

my mom and i were researching it and it said that horseslaughter was illegal in the us. i was reading the yahoo news on horses and junk when i saw an article on a foal being born. i looked at it and it said that dozens of horse(including the mom) were being sent to one of over 90,000 slaughter houses in the U.S. do you have any idea whats going on in this creal country????

Answer 1

Mr. Lee is correct in his facts, but is unfortunately moved only by emotion where it concerns the end uses of some horses.

I have owned horses at different times in my life, rode though out & was totally horse crazy as a girl.  When my boy asks me what my favorite animal is, it's always a horse!

But just because I love horses doesn't mean that I've checked my common sense at the door.  What do all of these silly, emotional activists think is going to happen to all of the older horses that can no longer be used; the horses that really are mental & can't be used; the horses that can no longer be turned out to pasture until they die of natural causes because their owners can no longer afford to care for them [worming, vaccinations, hoof care, extra feed, horse trailers, fuel, etc.]?

It's already started happening where I live.  Horses have started to turn up dead with all brands, tattoos & other identifying marks missing.  Horses are an expensive HOBBY & without the slaughter houses, what else are people supposed to do?

Personally, if it ever comes down to my not being able to properly take care of my horse due to personal injury or finances, if he is unusable due to injury or disease, I'm NOT going to try & pawn him off on someone as their problem.  That isn't responsible ownership.

Answer 2

RIght now, there is no horse slaughter in the US. You misread about the number of slaughter houses in the US. 90,000 was the number of horses sent to slaughter, not the number of slaughter houses. There are only 3 slaughter houses in the US now, and they have been closed by court orders. 2 are in Texas and 1 is in Illinois. (Think about it, how much space would 90,000 slaughter houses take up?  There'd be one on every block in every town in the country!)

Yes, these animals were being killed and sold as food, mostly to the French and Belgians. But there is good news too! The US House of Representatives and the Senate are getting ready to vote (and looks like approve into law with the President's signature) bills to PERMANENTLY BAN THE TRANSPORT OF ANY HORSE OR OTHER EQUINE FOR THE PURPOSE OF SLAUGHTER!. Very soon this barbaric practice will be finished in the US.

There are many reliable websites you can go to for more information. I highly reccommend www.timwoolleyracing.com. Go to the discussion board and look for the Horse Rescue section and in the General section.

We need to get the bills through the Congress to forever end horse slaughter. Unless these bills become law, horses will continue to be shipped to Canada and Mexico where they will die horrible, painful, undignified deaths. Just so some European pieces of (well, you know) can eat them. Please, help end the murder of our horses. If you have any more questions, please email me at [e-mail].

Answer 3

because the people that do it are g*y and don't know what it would feel like if we did it to them.

Answer 4

It looks to me like they are shipping the meat to other countries!  I have a friend who is just back from Argentina and horse was on the menu there....  GROSS!  I love horses and can't imagine hurting them in anyway!!!  

This is also one way they "manage" the wild Mustang population, by rounding some of them up, and whatever isn't adopted out, is sent to the slaughter house.  They do use their hooves to make glue, and I'm pretty certain that some of the mare's uterus and other female parts are used in making medications and cosmetics that we consume!  

It's just plain SAD!!!!!

Answer 5

To Lee: Have you forgotten to include the Pacific Rim countries ( Japan, Korea, all of Southeast Asia, and the like) in your list of who we export horse meat to? Horsemeat is a big delicacy in most if not all of these places- and while we are at it, let's include the Chinese on that list as well. Simply closing the slaughter houses will NOT stop horses from being slaughtered or horsemeat from being shipped overseas for human consumption. The problem runs much deeper than that, and there is big piece of it that you and others like you are totally ignoring-namely, the "by product" of the production of the drug Premarin, used in hormone replacement therapy by an estimated 30 million women worldwide. Premarin takes its name from the substance used to make it : PREGNANT MARE'S URINE !!! In order to produce Premarin, mares must be producing a foal- and there are some 35, 000 to 40,000 of them born every year on the Premarin farms in the Western US and Canada. Only about a third of these foals ever live to see their first birthday. The others are sent overseas to the slaughter houses there, where they are turned into and advertised as choice steaks in expensive restaurants. My family adopted a PMU foal, and he is now 5 years old and doing just fine- the family that bought him from us is using him as a riding and pleasure horse. Had we not adopted and rescued him, however, his fate would have been the same as the thousands of other PMU foals that die in the slaughterhouses overseas each year. One of our boarders has a horse that was a PMU foal that she rescued and adopted. He too would have met with death had she not stepped in to save him as a foal. I think you can see from these stories that horse slaughter alone is only one piece of an issue that is very large. We need to stop the production of this drug- indeed, I don't even understand why the FDA won't ban the stuff, because there are so many other alternatives available that don't involve the killing and horrendous cruelty that Premarin production does. There is a company in Canada that makes a product called Cenestin. Cenestin is a plant ( soy) based drug that is bio-identical to human estrogen, in every sense. But under US law, Cenestin can't even be sold, because the company that makes Premarin has a near monopoly on the marketing of this type of drug. I will say that there has been at least some good news- as many people are aware, the Women's Health Initative study was halted after it was shown that women who used HRT for extended periods were at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes than those who didn't, and the negative publicity from this HAS caused the demand for Premarin to drop. This has meant that some of the farms and ranches where the drug is produced have gone out of business, which is all to the good. But much more needs to be done- and we need to get this drug taken off the market, and do more to raise awareness among women of just how inhumane and cruel the practice of Premarin production really is. Banning the wholesale slaughter of horses and sale of horsemeat is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough.