Would you like fries with that (horse) burger?
June 30th, 2009 by COD
Horse slaughter is in the news again. Back in 2007, Congress, urged on by well meaning but misguided activists, outlawed the 3 remaining horse slaughter plants in the US. These were USDA inspected facilities that killed unwanted horses humanely and exported the meat for human consumption. Back then, I stated that it was a bad decision because all it did was move the slaughter business over the border where the USDA couldn’t regulate it.
Horse slaughter is a complicated issue. Horses occupy a gray area between livestock and pet/companion animal. Obviously, I could never eat horse meat or be party to slaughtering a horse for that purpose. However, I empathize with ranchers and others that need to get some return on an animal that no longer serves it’s intended purpose. I’d be a happy camper if every horse had a proper home on the range, or in a nice barn. However, the facts are many, many horses don’t have that option. A humane death seems like a better fate than starving to death neglected in a field somewhere. The humane death is much more likely if it happens here in the US where we can regulate it.
Also, focusing on slaughter lets the real culprits off the hook. Horse Associations that profit by owners registering their horses encourage indiscriminate breeding. Halter classes in which two year old horses make cash for the owner encourage over breeding in search of the next cash cow, errr horse. And don’t even get me started on the horse racing industry, or the production of Premarin. The real villain here is all the idiots breeding crap horses that will never be fit for anything useful, and thus become very expensive pasture pets, or fodder for the auctions where they become food. Eliminate the over breeding issues and the value of each remaining horse prices it out of the range of the slaughter horses. There will always be people that want to eat horse, and that is fine. But we could eliminate 80% of the problem be reducing the over breeding of horses in the first place.
Tags: horses
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