The Obama administration’s 2014 budget includes a proposal that would prevent money from being spent on the inspection of horse slaughtering facilities. In effect, this would ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption because facilities cannot operate without inspections.
Needless to say, this was greeted with mixed enthusiasm. The Humane Society of the United States, which has pushed for the end of horse slaughter, was thrilled. But businesses that have invested in buildings and equipment to open horse slaughtering plants were angry and eager to see this proposal removed.
Many pundits suspect the budget proposal was driven by Europe’s horse meat scandal, in which horse meat turned up in food packaged as beef in several countries in early 2013. I guess the theory is that preventing horse slaughter in the United States lowers the risk of a similar scandal happening here. If the motive is financial or health-related and less about being kind to horses, I can live with it.
Still, this proposal does not change the issue of unwanted horses. There are more than 100,000 unwanted horses in America each year, and they need to go somewhere. The rescue agencies simply cannot absorb them all. The end of horse slaughter in 2007 led to most of the unwanted horses being shipped to Mexico or Canada for slaughter, and slaughter in Mexico often is done by stabbing, according to the Houston Chronicle. Death by stabbing is about as inhumane as it gets.
So where does this new proposal leave us?
It’s Phase 1.
Phase 2 is breeder responsibility. If you breed a horse, you need to be responsible for it for life. You can sell it, but you need to know where it is, and you must go get it if it needs rescue.
That’s the only way to rein in the reckless breeding.
People should not be able to just breed animals indiscriminately and dump any horse that does not fall into the top 5 percent as far as a performance horse.
And I believe this rule should apply to all animal breeders, not just horse breeders.
How would society function if families each had a bunch of children and then only kept the two that were doing well in school? Where would all the other children go? A slaughter plant? I think not.
Since I would have missed the cut in my family, I feel lucky to have been born a human.
It’s time the slaughter process ends for horses.