Putting down a horse has to be one of the most difficult and expensive parts of owning a horse.
In one fell swoop, owners have to make a life-and-death decision for their equine friend, grieve over the loss of that friend, and serve as funeral director for a 1,000-pound animal that must be buried according to municipal code. You can’t just pick up a shovel and bury a horse. Machinery is needed at a minimum to maneuver the horse, and the animal needs to be buried in certain locations or taken elsewhere. Add in the vet bill, and it’s not cheap.
Which is why a recent story out of Iowa is infuriating.
A pet cemetery owner who has been burying horses (35 horses a year) along with dogs and cats has been fined $10,000 by the state for burying the horses.
Iowa’s Department of Natural Resource says the horses must be disposed of in landfills.
Take a moment to picture a favorite horse lying in a landfill covered with everyone else’s garbage.
The pet cemetery owner, Steve Johnson, appealed the fine to the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, and the appeal was turned down on Jan. 21, 2014.
The Des Moines Register interviewed Jon Tack, a DNR attorney, who said: “Our position and the law is that the burial of discarded solids is regulated. It’s not an emotional or sentimental issue. It’s a material that’s going into the ground, and we have regulations in regard to that.”
Never mind that a thousand-pound horse equals 10 to 12 large dogs, and many more dogs are buried in pet cemeteries, adding up to many more solids in the ground.
Tack, the attorney, said the state has looked only at the disposal of horses and not the burial of cats, dogs and other smaller companion animals and whether they could be breaking state solid waste laws.
Johnson’s pet cemetery is 120 acres. The Des Moines Register says Johnson opened the cemetery in 1988 after he was unable to find a place to bury a beloved dog; the pet cemetery was for animal lovers like himself who wanted a special resting place for their pets.
Johnson’s attorney, Jeff Bittner, argues that Johnson is being held to a higher standard than farmers, who are allowed by law to bury 524 cattle, sheep, hogs and poultry per acre a year. Farmers also are allowed to bury up to two each of other animals, such as horses, raised on their farms. That seems like a fair amount of solid waste.
In addition to burying horses, Johnson cremates them, and the DNR is not taking issue with that. Yet there’s no shortage of research online about the environmental issues with cremation, from the fumes expelled during cremation being toxic, to the powdered cremains being “sprinkled somewhere in memorial, releasing whatever compounds and toxins found in them back into the environment in a form that is easily picked up by wind or water,” according to the University of Virginia.
The rules for burying or cremating animals are not clear-cut or applied fairly to all entities.
The subject needs to be investigated thoroughly, with both animal rights advocates and environmental officials in the room. We must maintain a way to bury horses and all animals respectfully and in a way that allows grieving friends to visit the final resting place of their furry friends.