Horse-slaughter ban closely watched in U.S. [link]
Laura Rance | May 17, 2008
Are horses livestock or pets, tools or toys?
For most people, the answer to that question lies not in what happens to that horse during its life, but at its end. Most of society has no trouble with the notion of sending livestock to the slaughterhouse. But it's not something most people would do with their pets.
It's a question that divides recreational horse owners from the horse industry and animal welfare advocates from livestock owners.
And it's at the core of a highly controversial debate playing out in the U.S. courts right now with spillover effects for Canada.
U.S. legislators' decision last year to remove federal inspection services for horse-slaughter plants, which effectively eliminates their ability to operate, appears to be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Back in the bad old days when the slaughter plants were operating, between 40,000 and 60,000 unwanted horses were routinely shipped annually to processing plants in that country where they were turned into human or pet food. There were some highly publicized stories about the practice and how some of the racing industry's most famous steeds ended up at the slaughterhouse when their running days were done.
So began the 'save a horse, ban the slaughter' campaign.
The slaughter-ban camp won—at least this round.
But while it seems you can legislate a change in human behaviour, it's a little harder to change human nature.
U.S. horses continue to be shipped to slaughter. Only now they are loaded on trucks and hauled thousands of kilometres to Mexico and Canada, where plants still operate. Surplus foals once produced by the pregnant mare's urine industry made Canada a relatively large exporter of horse meat destined for European and Japanese markets. Those markets still exist.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency officials intervened in several instances last winter in which transport trucks arrived at the Canadian border carrying U.S. horses on trailers not designed for horses. Inspectors refused to allow them entry, which didn't help the overcrowded horses much, but sent a clear message to the trucking industry.
Another more insidious trend has emerged in the United States. The horse meat market has traditionally set a the floor price for horses. A horse that had any use at all would sell for a premium over the meat price. The absence of the meat buyer has pulled that floor away. Sometimes no one, not even the owner who brought it to the sale, is willing to take it home. They don't want to pay the sales commission on a horse that didn't sell or that didn't fetch an adequate price, either.
The U.S. Livestock Marketing Association, whose members often served as the middlemen in the slaughter process, is among the groups fighting to have the slaughter reinstated.
There are reports emerging of horses left to starve or fend for themselves by owners who are unwilling or unable to continue caring for them. USDA officials are quoted in a Reuters report as having to investigate a rising number of cases in which horses have been taken to public lands and either turned loose or shot and left to rot.
The idea of a horse running wild and free may be romanticized in the movies, but in reality, it's a pretty tough outcome—especially if an animal has been raised in captivity and cultured to be dependent on humans. "Nothing has changed for the horse; they are just dying and suffering in a different way," says Shanyn Silinksi, executive director of the Manitoba Farm Animal Care Council. "Don't make a horse suffer to make a person feel better."
Some say horse owners should euthanize a horse like they would a dog. The problem, however, is disposal. It's neither easy nor advisable to bury a 500-kilogram animal at the back of the garden. Paying for disposal can be costly.
There is growing pressure on U.S. lawmakers to reconsider their decision. Some want the slaughter ban lifted. Others want the ban expanded to make it illegal to export horses for slaughter, a move that would be difficult to enforce once the horse is beyond American borders.
The U.S. debate is far from over. But it's being closely watched.
Horses, with both their functional and emotional connection to humans, have become a bellwether of sorts for how our society's relationship with animals is evolving. "It's not a welfare agenda. It's a political agenda to change how we view animals," Silinski says.
XP—When animal rights propaganda triumphs over common sense and the American people's right to choose, none of us win ... least of all, the horses. I think each of the politicians who helped pass the ban should have about 5,000 unwanted horses delivered to their nicely manicured front lawn.
May 17, 2008
May 13, 2008
Export ban hard to enforce, will add to problems here
Horses abandoned in West as feed prices rise [link]
Laura Zuckerman | May 13, 2008
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) -- In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.
What the films don't show is the cowboy buying and hauling hay for his horse, or what happens to the horse when it is too aged, infirm or irascible to ride.
Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.
Just a year ago, the sale of an average horse suitable for recreation—one with neither prized bloodlines nor a performance record to heighten its status—would have fetched several thousand dollars.
Today, prices in some cases have dropped to just hundreds of dollars, largely because of higher costs for their maintenance and transport.
The situation for marginal horses—horses whose poor physical condition or disposition makes them targets for slaughter—is even worse, after a court ruling sought by animal-rights groups effectively shut down the U.S. horse slaughter industry last year.
The result is that a growing number of unwanted horses are being starved or turned loose to fend for themselves in the U.S. West, according to animal welfare advocates.
"What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter," said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. "We've got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night—my worst nightmares are coming true."
Such images have strong resonance in the West, the land of the rider on the range immortalized in art by Frederic Remington and in popular culture by actors such as the late President Ronald Reagan.
Far from Kentucky, where thoroughbreds race the Churchill Downs, owning a horse in the West is a middle-class occupation. The average horse owner rides for recreation and keeps their horse on their own land or land rented for the purpose, rather than at a commercially run barn.
Horses eat hay made from either grass or alfalfa, or a mix of both, and a modest amount of grain. Prices fluctuate, but in east central Idaho, hay prices have risen to $145 from $120 per ton a year ago, a jump of 21 percent. In northern Idaho it costs $220 per ton and as much as $300 per ton in parts of California. Feeding a horse can cost $2,000 a year or more.
TURNED LOOSE
The West is also the region where the historic practice of releasing domesticated horses into the wild—first by Spanish explorers and last by ranchers—gave rise to the herds of Mustangs, or feral horses, that still inhabit the vast public lands of Western states.
But the romantic concept of freeing a tamed horse to roam the West's wide open spaces bears no resemblance to the reality, said Kirk Miller, livestock investigator in Idaho and Montana for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"They have no survival instinct in the wild, no clue as to what's dangerous to eat, no knowledge of how to grub for food under the snow," he said.
Miller and Colorado State's Grandin are among animal experts who say the campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States to end domestic horse slaughter was well-intentioned but misguided.
Now the tens of thousands of American horses marked for slaughter are shipped to Canada and Mexico, where long, stressful journeys end in what some horse advocates say can be unduly painful deaths.
Most horses are slaughtered for human consumption, with Europe and Asia providing markets for their meat.
Some horse associations are siding with the Humane Society in its fight to end export of horses for slaughter altogether. But others are seeking to re-establish processing in the United States to broaden the outlet for unwanted horses and to ensure the animals are killed by a mechanical method approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society, said for Americans to have their horses killed for their meat would be akin to sending their pet dogs to slaughter for human consumption.
But unlike its canine counterpart, a horse weighs an average of 1,000 pounds and disposal of its carcass after Humane Society-recommended euthanasia has become burdensome. Where permitted by law and where able, owners can bury carcasses on their own land or pay several hundred dollars in assorted fees to deposit the remains at a local landfill.
Those complications may be behind what state livestock officials and federal land managers in the West say is a spike in the number of horses shot dead and dumped on public lands.
Scot Dutcher, animal protection chief with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the abandoned horse cases officials are addressing now is a ripple compared to the wave that may come.
"If it becomes illegal to export horses for slaughter, we'll be dealing with an equine tsunami," he said.
Meanwhile, officials at some sale barns in Montana are asking owners of especially old or underweight horses to pay the auction house if the animals do not bring a sufficient price.
And horse rescues, nonprofit groups that rehabilitate and place unwanted and often abused horses, are reporting a rise in the number of calls they are fielding and the number of horses they turn away for lack of resources.
"I could have 500 horses here tomorrow," said Brent Glover, head of Orphan Acres, an Idaho rescue operation that can maintain a maximum of 130 horses.
XP—Yes, the auction prices are so bad that some horses do not fetch a high enough bid to cover the cost of consignment, leaving certain desperate owners who could not afford to feed the horse in the first place with yet another debt. There is no longer a need in many areas to "outbid the kill buyer" to keep the better horses from shipping, so there is no median value for the gentle or the untamed. Only the finest horses with proven records and quality training are fetching consistently high bids. The mixed breed green broke colt that came about so that someone's kids could witness "the miracle of birth" may not even fetch $25 today.
Laura Zuckerman | May 13, 2008
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) -- In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.
What the films don't show is the cowboy buying and hauling hay for his horse, or what happens to the horse when it is too aged, infirm or irascible to ride.
Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.
Just a year ago, the sale of an average horse suitable for recreation—one with neither prized bloodlines nor a performance record to heighten its status—would have fetched several thousand dollars.
Today, prices in some cases have dropped to just hundreds of dollars, largely because of higher costs for their maintenance and transport.
The situation for marginal horses—horses whose poor physical condition or disposition makes them targets for slaughter—is even worse, after a court ruling sought by animal-rights groups effectively shut down the U.S. horse slaughter industry last year.
The result is that a growing number of unwanted horses are being starved or turned loose to fend for themselves in the U.S. West, according to animal welfare advocates.
"What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter," said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. "We've got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night—my worst nightmares are coming true."
Such images have strong resonance in the West, the land of the rider on the range immortalized in art by Frederic Remington and in popular culture by actors such as the late President Ronald Reagan.
Far from Kentucky, where thoroughbreds race the Churchill Downs, owning a horse in the West is a middle-class occupation. The average horse owner rides for recreation and keeps their horse on their own land or land rented for the purpose, rather than at a commercially run barn.
Horses eat hay made from either grass or alfalfa, or a mix of both, and a modest amount of grain. Prices fluctuate, but in east central Idaho, hay prices have risen to $145 from $120 per ton a year ago, a jump of 21 percent. In northern Idaho it costs $220 per ton and as much as $300 per ton in parts of California. Feeding a horse can cost $2,000 a year or more.
TURNED LOOSE
The West is also the region where the historic practice of releasing domesticated horses into the wild—first by Spanish explorers and last by ranchers—gave rise to the herds of Mustangs, or feral horses, that still inhabit the vast public lands of Western states.
But the romantic concept of freeing a tamed horse to roam the West's wide open spaces bears no resemblance to the reality, said Kirk Miller, livestock investigator in Idaho and Montana for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"They have no survival instinct in the wild, no clue as to what's dangerous to eat, no knowledge of how to grub for food under the snow," he said.
Miller and Colorado State's Grandin are among animal experts who say the campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States to end domestic horse slaughter was well-intentioned but misguided.
Now the tens of thousands of American horses marked for slaughter are shipped to Canada and Mexico, where long, stressful journeys end in what some horse advocates say can be unduly painful deaths.
Most horses are slaughtered for human consumption, with Europe and Asia providing markets for their meat.
Some horse associations are siding with the Humane Society in its fight to end export of horses for slaughter altogether. But others are seeking to re-establish processing in the United States to broaden the outlet for unwanted horses and to ensure the animals are killed by a mechanical method approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society, said for Americans to have their horses killed for their meat would be akin to sending their pet dogs to slaughter for human consumption.
But unlike its canine counterpart, a horse weighs an average of 1,000 pounds and disposal of its carcass after Humane Society-recommended euthanasia has become burdensome. Where permitted by law and where able, owners can bury carcasses on their own land or pay several hundred dollars in assorted fees to deposit the remains at a local landfill.
Those complications may be behind what state livestock officials and federal land managers in the West say is a spike in the number of horses shot dead and dumped on public lands.
Scot Dutcher, animal protection chief with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the abandoned horse cases officials are addressing now is a ripple compared to the wave that may come.
"If it becomes illegal to export horses for slaughter, we'll be dealing with an equine tsunami," he said.
Meanwhile, officials at some sale barns in Montana are asking owners of especially old or underweight horses to pay the auction house if the animals do not bring a sufficient price.
And horse rescues, nonprofit groups that rehabilitate and place unwanted and often abused horses, are reporting a rise in the number of calls they are fielding and the number of horses they turn away for lack of resources.
"I could have 500 horses here tomorrow," said Brent Glover, head of Orphan Acres, an Idaho rescue operation that can maintain a maximum of 130 horses.
XP—Yes, the auction prices are so bad that some horses do not fetch a high enough bid to cover the cost of consignment, leaving certain desperate owners who could not afford to feed the horse in the first place with yet another debt. There is no longer a need in many areas to "outbid the kill buyer" to keep the better horses from shipping, so there is no median value for the gentle or the untamed. Only the finest horses with proven records and quality training are fetching consistently high bids. The mixed breed green broke colt that came about so that someone's kids could witness "the miracle of birth" may not even fetch $25 today.
What's missing? Common sense.
Congress hears results of U.S. horse slaughter ban [link]
Bryan Salvage | May 13, 2008
KANSAS CITY, MO. ― Participants in the Livestock Marketing Association’s fourth annual Washington, D.C. Fly-In said members of Congress are realizing the unintended consequences of closing the last three horse slaughter plants in the U.S.
Jim Santomaso, L.M.A. president, said the industry is seeing "more and more reports of abandoned horses and of horses turned out and left to starve because owners can’t afford their upkeep or have the means to properly dispose of them," after a series of legislative actions closed the three remaining U.S.-based plants in recent years.
Cavel International Inc., DeKalb, Ill., was the final plant to close this past year. State officials closed the plant, and a legal battle to reopen has led Cavel officials to the U.S. Supreme Court. In February, L.M.A. filed an "amicus curiae" (friend of the court) brief with the Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the Illinois law banning horse slaughter and the federal appeals court decision upholding that law. That law, and the subsequent appeals decision, effectively exempted 40,000-60,000 horses from humane slaughter, the brief said. The Cavel plant slaughtered that many horses annually, all under the provisions of the federal Humane Slaughter Act, which applies only to U.S. plants.
"[Lawmakers] are ready to listen to the argument that banning slaughter is creating huge problems," said Mr. Santomaso. "The ban takes away individual property rights, when you tell a horse owner what he can and cannot do with an animal that may be at the end of its useful life."
L.M.A. representatives made these points during meetings with the chairman and staff members of panels of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, and lawmakers from the members’ home states. During a trip to Washington April 27-30, the group also met with the chair of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to discuss the unintended consequences of using the appropriations process in removing a humane method of disposal for tens of thousands of unwanted horses.
The "terrible result" of legislation banning this slaughter, he said, "is to close legitimately operated food-processing plants based solely on cultural and emotional arguments. And that sets a very dangerous precedent of banning a legitimate meat product for reasons other than food safety or public health."
"We are cautiously optimistic that the people we met on Capitol Hill will keep our position in mind as Congress moves forward on this key issue," he said.
XP—That's what I've been saying. To us, horse meat may be revolting, to others a hamburger made of beef is just as unsavory. But who are we to police our neighbor's dinner plates?
Bryan Salvage | May 13, 2008
KANSAS CITY, MO. ― Participants in the Livestock Marketing Association’s fourth annual Washington, D.C. Fly-In said members of Congress are realizing the unintended consequences of closing the last three horse slaughter plants in the U.S.
Jim Santomaso, L.M.A. president, said the industry is seeing "more and more reports of abandoned horses and of horses turned out and left to starve because owners can’t afford their upkeep or have the means to properly dispose of them," after a series of legislative actions closed the three remaining U.S.-based plants in recent years.
Cavel International Inc., DeKalb, Ill., was the final plant to close this past year. State officials closed the plant, and a legal battle to reopen has led Cavel officials to the U.S. Supreme Court. In February, L.M.A. filed an "amicus curiae" (friend of the court) brief with the Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the Illinois law banning horse slaughter and the federal appeals court decision upholding that law. That law, and the subsequent appeals decision, effectively exempted 40,000-60,000 horses from humane slaughter, the brief said. The Cavel plant slaughtered that many horses annually, all under the provisions of the federal Humane Slaughter Act, which applies only to U.S. plants.
"[Lawmakers] are ready to listen to the argument that banning slaughter is creating huge problems," said Mr. Santomaso. "The ban takes away individual property rights, when you tell a horse owner what he can and cannot do with an animal that may be at the end of its useful life."
L.M.A. representatives made these points during meetings with the chairman and staff members of panels of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees, and lawmakers from the members’ home states. During a trip to Washington April 27-30, the group also met with the chair of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to discuss the unintended consequences of using the appropriations process in removing a humane method of disposal for tens of thousands of unwanted horses.
The "terrible result" of legislation banning this slaughter, he said, "is to close legitimately operated food-processing plants based solely on cultural and emotional arguments. And that sets a very dangerous precedent of banning a legitimate meat product for reasons other than food safety or public health."
"We are cautiously optimistic that the people we met on Capitol Hill will keep our position in mind as Congress moves forward on this key issue," he said.
XP—That's what I've been saying. To us, horse meat may be revolting, to others a hamburger made of beef is just as unsavory. But who are we to police our neighbor's dinner plates?
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