Put HSUS millions to good use.

Horse slaughter ban causing problems, some owners say [link]

Carol Barrett | June 11, 2008

STERLING — While at the Washington, D.C., fly-in, the Livestock Marketing Association group met with the chair of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to discuss the recent horse slaughter ban.

DeLauro’s subcommittee voted to end federal funding for the slaughter plant inspections, which meant U.S. plants could not stay open.

“We told the lawmakers that horse owners want and need a legitimate, practical and humane way to dispose of their horses that have come to the end of their useful life, but still have value as a slaughter animal,” he said.

Now that they do not have this option for disposing of horses they can no longer keep, many horse owners are taking desperate measures. With the current high price of hay and other feed, some horses are simply abandoned.

Some are left at auction markets or allowed to starve. Others are illegally released with wild horse herds on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grassland. Many of these lands are already stocked to capacity, so horses are routinely rounded up and taken off the land.

In February, LMA filed an “amicus curiae” (friend of the court) brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to overturn an Illinois law that closed the last U.S. plant, Caval, as well as the federal appeals court decision upholding that law.

“(Government officials) are now starting to see the consequences of this,” Santomaso said. “I don’t think they really saw what was going to happen.”

The Humane Society of the U.S. (not the more familiar American Humane Society) was instrumental in pressing for the horse slaughter ban and takes credit for it. HSUS is a political activist group. It operates no animal shelters and does not perform animal rescues of any kind.

“When you look at the millions they have in their budget, I would question their real concern for animals,” Santomaso said.


XP—Good point. Let the millions in HSUS coffers buy these unwanted horses.