Horse Slaughterhouses Could Be Banned Under Proposed Bill
In the ongoing debate regarding slaughtering horses in America, a spending bill published Monday could end the longstanding debate by removing funding for inspections at equine facilities, effectively banning horse slaughterhouses.
There had been previous reports about proposed horse slaughterhouses in New Mexico and Missouri, but lawsuits had prevented those facilities from opening, according to AP.
"Americans do not want to see scarce tax dollars used to oversee an inhumane, disreputable horse slaughter industry," Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive at The Humane Society of the United States, told the Associated Press. "We don't have dog and cat slaughter plants in the U.S. catering to small markets overseas, and we shouldn't have horse slaughter operations for that purpose, either."
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Still other animal rights groups insist that the spending bill does not go far enough and have pleaded with congress to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. That act, if passed, would ban the transportation of horses to other countries for the purpose of slaughter. Horses are currently taken to Canada and Mexico for slaughter.
"They are forced to endure an agonizing transport, many times without food or water and cramped into overcrowded trailers," according to a statement on the Americans Against Horse Slaughter website. "They are then brutally butchered while experiencing fear and pain. (The bill) would establish a permanent ban on horse slaughter and the transportation of horses to slaughter for human consumption."
However, supporters of horse slaughterhouses state that domestic slaughter of horses is the most humane way to kill the animals given the lax oversight and regulations in other countries where horse meat is consumed.
There are also others, such as various Native American groups, who claim that the growing wild horse population in parts of the country is adversely affecting their rangeland and rendering it useless.
"It is certainly disappointing that Congress is returning to a failed policy at the urging of special interest groups while failing to provide for an alternative," Blair Dunn, an attorney for Valley Meat Co. in Roswell, N.M., and Rains Natural Meats in Gallatin, Mo., said in a statement. "The result is more waste and devastation of the range and the denial of access to an export market that would have created jobs and positive economic impacts to rural agriculture communities that desperately need these opportunities."
