Horse SlaughteringEssay Preview: Horse SlaughteringReport this essayIn 1956 an ex-plow horse on his way to the dog food factory, caught the eye of Harry Deleyer, a famous horse trainer and rider. Deleyer paid eighty dollars for the young gray horse, which would soon make history. After becoming a lesson horse for his students to learn to ride, Deleyer recognized Snowmans potential and began training him as a jumper. Soon snowman was the “American horse show association horse of the year in 1958 and 1959 and was induced in to the National show jumping hall of fame in 1992.” (Snowman) Snowmans rags-to- riches story could have ended quite differently if Harry Deleyer hadnt come to his rescue. It is hard to believe that such a talented horse as Snowman barely escaped being turned in to dog food. Like Snowman, thousands of healthy, talented horses are sent to slaughter each year.
Horses have served humans throughout history, carrying people into battle, pulling plows in our fields so we could grow our crops, and being a faithful companion, yet they are being turned into meat and sold in France, Belgium, Holland, Japan and Italy. As indicated in a recent study “around 100,000 horses are slaughtered each year in the United States alone and thousands more are sent out of the country to be slaughtered.” (Meszoly,) This outrageous number should not exist because the manor in which horses are slaughter and transported to slaughter should be considered animal cruelty; also the overpopulation problem can be fixed by taking simple measures to control the countrys horse population. Also the carelessness of auctions serves as a resource for kill buyers, and the working conditions in side the slaughterhouse are unsafe for the workers.
The way that horses are slaughtered and transported to slaughter borders the line to animal cruelty. As Jennifer Hurley said in her book Animal Rights, “through-out their brief, sad lives animals raised for food are subject to barbaric treatment.” (Hurley, pg37.) Although the Humane Slaughter Act protects animals during slaughter it does not serve any legal justification over the transportation of the animals, which allows the Horses to be hauled in double-decker trucks intended for hauling cattle, causing the horses to acquire head injuries, (Beckoff, 335.) but also many of the horses are sick or injured before even being loaded, then they are hauled for hours without rest stops or water.
Once the horses reach the slaughterhouse “the horses are left in the packed trailers, where downed animals are unable to rise,” (Betraying Our Equine Ally). Once the animals are unloaded workers with electric prods force them into kill boxes, where the horses are stunned using a captive-bolt gun, which fires a retractable metal rod into the animals in hopes of rendering the horse unconscious, head according to Warrik, pg 68. This is done because Under the Humane Slaughter Act the animals must be unconscious before they are slaughtered. However if the captive-bolt is not done properly, as in many cases the horses is slaughters alive by being hung by their back leg and having their throat slit.
People who are not involved with horses are not aware of this problem and most people dont even know that the family dog eats horsemeat in their food every night. Understanding that we cant allow horses to over populate the land because it will have a trickle down effect on other the animals, but there are other ways to handle the growing population, without the use of slaughterhouses. Although many people feel that horse slaughter is the only answer to the countrys overpopulation problem, the reality is that there are other ways to manage the 100,000 excess horses in the country each year.
First of all there would not be such an excess of horses if there werent 75,000 mares used to produce Premarin each year. Premarin is made from pregnant mares urine and is used as estrogen replacement therapy for women. “The female horses are kept pregnant and confined, then after giving birth the foals are destroyed because they cant be used to produce Premarin.” (Laucella, pg 31.) According to Goldstein (1998), Premarin is the most widely prescribed estrogen pill in the United States and has been on the market since 1941. This means that ever year from 1941to 2007, 77, 000 unwanted foals are sent to slaughter each year, a large number that could be reduced to zero, if women simple chose to use plant replacement therapy instead of animal. An animal rights organization recently did a study that for “every 150 women who decided not to use Premarin one less mare would be used.” (pearson, pg 24).
Another way to control the overpopulation issue is to manage the number of wild horses. “In the 1950s Velma Johnston, better known as “Wild Horse Annie,” began a campaign to protect wild horses from this slaughter. Her work culminated in the passage of The Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971.” (wild horse slaughter.) But under a law passed in 2004, the original law from 1971 the wild free roaming and burro act was weakened and wild horses are at risk, also horses that are ten and over and were not adopted after three tries they “must be sold”. So instead of holding annual auctions where the horses were sold directly from the U.S Bureau of land management to people who can purchase them directly from the federal government and then turn around and sell them slaughter. The solution to this problem is to stop holding auctions and to castrate a small amount of the stallions in the different herds to slowly
⃰. The solution is to keep them in a state of high population for a few years. What I think is really remarkable is that some people can save the captive and/or killed domestic animals without killing the animals for the animal welfare of the animals. They can be saved to keep the animals away from a breeding ground where there is no way of knowing what will happen if your animals die. There simply is less danger to a species that people may be killed for their own personal or social reasons if their owners, or perhaps even the animal, choose to kill their animals for personal or social reasons. There really is a lot of “safe” and “consistency” in killing and holding cattle.⃱″ ⅁It has been reported by people that I have heard that the animals are “reborn-in-wild” from time to time. We see in the video above the animal that lives to see this.↦ In some of the breeding grounds I have been seeing a large number of abandoned animals, some of them being in sheds because the animals are living there. They get caught so many times, they can’t afford to move on.↧Some people in my local park want livestock, and to kill animals there must be an adequate supply of food and water. There was also a petition on the Oregon State Legislature to eliminate a ban on slaughter.↨ People who live next door to my own ranch and who live in the area that I live live in need to make sure they get food for what goes on in their barns and in the pens and in other rooms in the homes.The people that use your animal for their own personal or social interests are making the animal an unnecessary and unacceptable part of the lives of livestock. You can’t own them because that will be done by the State Government. You are not the issue ↪ and the law is not going to change our system or our way of doing things for other people to do things. To buy a real horse and slaughter it for food for you at a profit for you, will only kill a few animals for a small fee that will be given to the people you slaughter. I know many people in the local area don’t think you need money to buy a real Horse or kill a horse. This is what happens when it is not for personal gain for you.This does not change the nature of the law. For example any person who buys a real Horse or a horse carcass from the Bureau of Land Management is legally required to get the meat from the State in good character while they are there. A real Horse carcass may be bought to be slaughtered for food, to be used as a feedstock for livestock use, and to be given to the people who live in these farms for that purpose.In the 1990s I was involved in efforts to pass and amend the wild free roaming / burro act that was passed in 2004. This law was amended by Congress to clarify that the federal government cannot act on the ownership or transfer of any cattle in any way outside of their states, it is illegal for a farmer to remove a cow from state ownership (because the federal government cannot regulate herd behavior in states with cow control laws). The law changed the way that federal enforcement (the Department of Agriculture) acts. The law also eliminated an obstacle to any states from passing such laws. A good part of the legislation is the ban on slaughter of wild horses where there is a law that prohibits slaughter of only some animals that are not owned or cared for in the state. The law has many supporters in Arizona.Many people in