Skip to content. In the year , approximately 36, American horses were trucked over our borders to be slaughtered for human consumption. Until this practice is banned and Congress passes a law against slaughter here in the U. Horse slaughter is NOT humane euthanasia. Horses bound for slaughter who may include pregnant mares, foals and horses who are injured or blind are commonly and legally shipped for more than 24 hours at a time in crowded trucks without food, water or rest.
The methods do not uniformly offer provide quick, painless deaths for all and there are documented instances in which horses have been observed conscious during dismemberment. As flight animals, horses commonly respond to a noisy environment where they see, smell and sense danger by flinging their heads in the kill box, creating obvious potential for multiple injuries during stunning.
The last three U. In , these facilities killed more than , horses for human consumption, shipping the meat overseas. Slaughterhouses have proved to be environmentally damaging as well as economically draining to the communities that have housed them. Notably, communities with experience hosting horse slaughter facilities do not want them back: Texas and Illinois have enacted laws that specifically ban selling, giving and possessing horse meat intended for human consumption.
Though exports have been dropping in recent years, tens of thousands of American equines continue to be shipped to slaughter across our borders annually. Looking at data from to , an average of , American horses were trucked over our borders each year to slaughter facilities in Mexico and Canada.
Since closure of the domestic plants in the earlier part of there has been no correlating rise in neglect and abuse cases. Hundreds of horse rescue organizations operate around the country, and additional facilities are being established.
However, not every horse currently going to slaughter will need to be absorbed into the rescue community. Sick and elderly horses should be euthanized by a licensed veterinarian.
It is not the government's responsibility to provide for the care of horses voluntarily given up by their owners. Approximately , horses die annually in this country 10 percent of an estimated population of 9.
Just over , horses were slaughtered in the US If slaughter were no longer an option and these horses were rendered or buried instead, this would represent a small increase in the number of horses being disposed of in this manner—an increase that the current infrastructure can certainly sustain. However, there is no logic in suggesting that all horses currently going to slaughter would need to be euthanized and disposed of following passage of the Safeguard American Food Exports SAFE Act.
Because most horses going to slaughter are marketable animals, many of the horses previously slaughtered would instead be kept by their owners, sold to someone else or placed at sanctuaries following passage of a ban, thereby reducing any impact on the current infrastructure even further. Additionally, humane euthanasia and carcass disposal is highly affordable and widely available. The Safeguard American Food Exports SAFE Act contains clear provisions prohibiting the export of horses for slaughter abroad, as well as clear enforcement and penalty provisions.
Risk of federal prosecution and the high costs associated with illegally transporting horses long distances for slaughter abroad are strong deterrents. Ironically, the very organizations most critical of the recent closure of the three domestic horse slaughter plants due to the subsequent surge in horses going to slaughter in Mexico are working to defeat passage of the Safeguard American Food Exports SAFE Act.
In doing so, they are working in tandem with the companies that until recently slaughtered horses here and which now are buying horses in the US and shipping them to their plants in Mexico and Canada.
There have been many reported cases of animal welfare violations in Canadian horse slaughterhouses including failure to provide food and water, illegal unloading of animals, animals left for extended periods in kill pens and sick or injured animals denied veterinary care. Not surprisingly, veterinary experts around the world and leading animal protection groups have denounced horse slaughter as inhumane. Once the horses are corralled into the slaughterhouse, the end is predictable—violent and bloody.
Sometimes injured and emaciated, horses are beaten and electro-shocked in overcrowded pens and must endure the smell of blood and the sights and sounds of other horses in pain and being killed before they, too, are led into a kill chute.
Horse slaughterhouses use the same type of stalls and techniques as cattle slaughterhouses. These stalls are too wide for horses and the captive-bolt stun gun method used with cattle is ill-suited for horses.
Horses are an extreme example of a flight animal. The panic and instinctive desire to escape they experience in the slaughterhouse causes them to thrash their heads frantically in the kill chute, making it difficult to effectively stun them prior to slaughter.
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