The editorial “Better laws can stop horses’ needless suffering” (Feb. 27) was internally inconsistent and factually incorrect. The article began by claiming that before the closing of the domestic slaughter plants, owners could sell their “injured or geriatric horse” to a kill buyer, but now “horses are being turned loose in the desert.”

First, kill buyers do not want geriatric horses because horse meat is sold as a delicacy in Europe. The typical slaughter horse is less than 14 years of age and USDA studies show that fewer than 7 percent have any significant injury or disability.

Secondly, there is no evidence of horses being intentionally abandoned in the desert or anywhere else. There isn’t even a category for “abandoned horses” because investigators have no way of knowing whether a horse was intentionally abandoned or simply strayed, and there has been no significant increase in stray horses.

The claim that horses are being abandoned because of the lack of killer buyers is even contradicted later by the statement “Horses are still being bought for slaughter, although now they are being shipped to Mexico where there is no oversight…”

Indeed horses are still being bought in similar numbers to last year and nobody will disagree with the article’s assessment that slaughter in Mexico is a “chamber of horrors”. But the article begs Congress not to pass the very legislation (the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, HR.503 / S.311) that would protect horses from this fate!

The implication that domestic slaughter plants protected our horses from these horrors is also wrong. While exports did increase dramatically last year, there has always been a stream of horses going to Mexico. In 1994 domestic plants slaughtered 107,000 horses and yet we still exported over 31,000 to Mexico and over 35,000 to Canada.

The article claims that without slaughter there will be increases in abuse and neglect. Yet the statistical record shows just the opposite. When California banned slaughter in 1998, abuse and neglect did not increase. When the Cavel plant burned in 2002, it reduced domestic slaughter by 40 percent, but the number of cases of abuse and neglect reported in Illinois, which had doubled over the three previous years, actually fell.

Slaughter inside the U.S. ended on September 20th. Despite anecdotal stories to the contrary, the number of cases of horse abuse nationwide actually fell from an average of 12 cases involving 107.6 equines per month before September 20th to an average of 7 cases involving 79.5 equines per month afterward.

Finally, the article asks “What would happen if Congress passed a law prohibiting humane societies and city pounds from euthanizing dogs and cats?” But that question falsely equates slaughter with euthanasia. The real question is “What would happen if Congress legalized the slaughter of dogs and cats for human consumption overseas?” That is the reality our horses face. The only thing they have on their side is the truth, and we owe it to them that it be heard.

John Holland is a freelance writer and the author of three books. He writes frequently on the subject of horse slaughter from his small farm in the mountains of Virginia where he lives with his wife Sheilah and their 11 equines.

Written by John Holland

Source: Arizona Range News