Montana HB 418

[BUDDYSGIRL]

Wow 4j, tell us how you really feel! LMAO!!

[kansasrunner123]

I was talking to westmar idiot! He said he had a horse that bucked! My gosh so now your saying we should have slaughter because of one damn horse? Put it down! Euthanize it! I wasn't even talking to you. Go ahead and bring it over. My gosh

[kansasrunner123]

I don't breed my horses I RESCUE them. I got a new shipment of 16 horses in the other day. I quickly adopt them out and the number of horses I have at a time varies.

[kansasrunner123]

Yes, I do. I think horse racing should either be stopped or the breeding strictly controlled by the gov.

[4jpainthorses]

Well twit, we have had some of them too and the only place for one like that is either in a rodeo string or the killer buyer. When you have one that nobody can ride and it won't quit bucking, then it needs to go. There are to many good ones out there to waste time and money on a bad one.
Oh and by the way twit, I am not an idiot, I have been in the horse business through the good times and the bad and these are sure not the good times.
For your information, racing will never be stopped and hopefully the government will never be able to tell us what we can and can not breed. They control enough shit already.
I almost had road kill today, nearly hit a deer going to the ranch this morning. LOL
Hey BG, I am glad that you are laughing your ass off, it is quite funny on this topic now.

[BUDDYSGIRL]

Originally Posted by kansasrunner123

I don't breed my horses I RESCUE them. I got a new shipment of 16 horses in the other day. I quickly adopt them out and the number of horses I have at a time varies.

I'm curious, where do you "quickly adopt" them out to?

[kansasrunner123]

You calling me a twit doesn't bother me. :)
And why can't you put the horses down humanely? Or send them to a retirment farm? Don't say the only places for a horse like that are the rodeo string and killer buyers.

[kansasrunner123]

I adopt them out to people that have an organ called a heart. People that even though the horse may not have potential, they can still give it a loving home. Many horses that buck and stuff have emotional problems from people that have mistreated them. Slaughter is very unnecessary.

[kansasrunner123]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/sp...ef=othersports

[kansasrunner123]

I’m surprised the NY Times would publish this article. Maybe you can get away with this in a novel, but Smiley omits there are actually about 920,000 or so horses that are euthanized in the US each year; most horses do not die by slaughter. Anywhere from 66,000-100,000 or so are purchased for kill buyers for slaughter.

The infrastructure for euthanizing horses, whether by lethal injection or shooting, and for disposing of their remains, could easily absorb this additional number of 66,000-100,000 if slaughter is banned. It costs about $28-30 to euthanize a horse, nothing to shoot it, and about $200-$225 to dispose of the animal. Not exactly a burden for an animal that has been friend and pet.

So, slaughter is not “necessary”. In fact, without slaughter there would be less overbreeding.

You should also know most horses that are slaughtered are healthy. 92% according to the USDA. That is because slaughter has nothing to do with unwanted, sick, old, or abandoned horses. Slaughter is a for profit business driven by a demand for horsemeat in foreign countries. It wouldn’t matter how many old, unwanted horses there are: If no one ate horsemeat, there would be no slaughter.
The fact that you are seeing unwanted horses is because of the economy, not lack of slaughter. Slaughter is still available. In fact, many of the stories in the media about abandoned horses are false, planted by pro-slaughterers: http://www.kaufmanzoning.net/Deletin...ShortPaper.pdf

Historically when horse slaughter shuts down or slows, there has been no increase in unwanted horses; there is instead a decline in horse theft which should tell you something about horse slaughterers.

If you want information about what horse slaughter operations do to cities, go here: Open Letter to State Legislatures Considering Pro-Horse Slaughter Resolutions | Animal Law Coalition

Surely no one still thinks horse slaughter is humane? That is a myth. It is a brutal terrifying ordeal and many times the horses are improperly stunned before they are strung up and slaughtered. So they know what is happening and suffer terribly. I am talking about US slaughterhouses before they were closed.

You are a wonderful writer, but you have no right to use your celebrity to promote animal cruelty and try to pass off this antiquated process as “necessary”. Shame on you. This brutal practice is about as necessary as dog fighting.



I am very disappointed in Ms. Smiley’s one-sided article here (and as it is a blog I guess the NYT doesn’t need to do any fact-checking…). It is very ironic that you open by stating the need to talk honestly and then do no such thing.

Ms. Smiley, slaughter is a BUSINESS that runs on the laws of supply and demand. It is not an end-of-life service for horse owners. Slaughterhouses don’t want the ailing, old, neglected horses — that is one reason why OTTBs are butchered in such numbers: they are available while still young and tender.

Did you know that only about 1% of U.S. horses are butchered for human consumption? That is the number of horses that Europeans want to eat. Slaughter-as-a-business is not going to ramp up just because some people perceive an oversupply — demand drives the business, not the supply.

In addition, if only 1% of horses are butchered and eaten, that is not going to be a very big help with the problem of surplus or unaffordable-any-longer horses, is it? And many of these horses are not going to be desirable for meat anyway.

As for carcass disposal, currently the number of horses slaughtered (that 1%, or between 90,000 and 100,000) is equal to about 10% of horse deaths here annually not by slaughter. Something happens with their carcasses; could that system not handle a 10% increase without falling apart?

If, however, it is more than a 10% increase in carcass disposal that would be needed, and something does has to be done, then slaughter for human consumption would not fix the problem anyway, being limited by the demand as previously noted.

You may at this point want to suggest that new markets could be found for horsemeat. Ms. Smiley, you have owned racehorses — you know what they are given regularly and without reservation: bute, ivermectin, fly spray, vaccinations, antibiotics, all sorts of preparations internal and external that state “Not for use on animals intended as food.” Bute is believed to be so powerful a carcinogen that it is forbidden in dairy cows. Would you eat that meat? I would not (and I do eat beef). The meat only gets into the EU because there are loopholes for frozen meat, and the European consumers (perhaps foolishly) assume that the same safeguards are in place that would be in force for equines slaughtered there.

With respect to California, I believe it is ILLEGAL for horses to be shipped out of California to slaughter for human consumption. The laws did not just ban slaughter, they banned the transport as well. These laws are being flouted, as are the laws against abandoning and neglecting horses or any other animals. But, should the response to lax law enforcement be to butcher and eat the victims? I don’t think so.

(The NorCal — which is a horse rescue, by the way, not a location — euthanasia clinics are a responsible and humane service offered to horse owners, I agree, and should be emulated elsewhere. As a side note, studies have been done that showed neglect and horse theft DECREASED after slaughter was banned in California.)

You state that “it would be far better to regulate horse transportation and slaughter” — well, guess what? They are/were quite thoroughly regulated — BUT the regulations were not enforced and there is no reason to think it would be different now.

The business would not be so profitable if it had to be humane. There was no will to operate the abattoirs in a humane manner (see Horse Slaughter - Mary Nash's Horse Slaughter Website for the USDA’s own reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Act) and there will not be in future. As an example of the lack of will to be humane, Canada has just shut down one of the larger of their horse slaughter plants for multiple violations (both humane and environmental), which is why the European companies that own this industry are so eager for the Western states to allow new plants. They fear that their easy profits are slipping from their bloody hands. Meanwhile, they do have the money to fund lobbyists and PR firms to spread their disinformation.

Slaughterhouses pollute their locations, they dehumanize their employees, and they provide almost nothing of value to their communities (Dallas Crown famously paid $5 in taxes one year). Your unnamed source’s quote — “our cities would run the risk of becoming filled with diseased and rotting carcasses. Fatal viruses and bacteria would spread uncontrolled through the population.” — in another piece of irony, is more accurately descriptive of what life near slaughterhouses would be like.

Slaughter is not the answer! America’s horses, especially our Thoroughbreds, have been trained to trust us, to thrill us with their athleticism and courage. They do not deserve to be prodded into a blood-greased chute, shot clumsily with a bolt gun intended for cattle, hung up by a hind leg and bled out while still alive, and then dismembered sometimes while conscious! Slaughter is not only not necessary, it is wrong!