“Horse slaughter”. A shocking term used to describe something most Americans would cringe at, when you think of slaughter you think of brutally killing something. Because, most of the general public in the United States thinks of horses as pets, horse slaughter is considered taboo. Americans do not understand the benefits of horse slaughter and the negative impact taking it away would have on the horse industry. Horse slaughter would benefit the United States for many reasons; it would stimulate economic growth, save horses across the country from starving, poor living conditions, it would preserve and save the natural wildlife, it would prolong horses’ lives, and lastly be more humane. 

Currently the United States government spends $42 million to fund the Wild Horse and Burro Act established in 1971, which protects and cares for wild horses and burros in the north Western portion of the United States. 

“There are nearly 70,000 wild horses and burros on public lands in the West -- three times the recommended level -- and nearly 50,000 additional horses and burros that have been removed from the range and are available for adoption. The cost of caring for each animal that goes unadopted can be nearly $50,000.” –BLM 

This act was meant to protect wild horses and burros, however the act shut down most of the horse slaughter plants in the country. These plants were beneficial to protecting wild horses. 

According to the Bureau of Land Management, from 2015 to 2016, there was a 15% increase in wild horse and burro population. 

“The updated numbers show more than twice the number of horses on the range than is recommended under BLM land use plans. It is also two and a half times the number of horses and burros that were estimated to be in existence when the Wild and Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971.” –Burro of Land Management 

The Bureau of Land Management, while protecting and managing these animals, continues to try to get horses and burros adopted. In 2000, roughly 8,000 horses and burros were adopted a year and in recent years has dropped to as low as 2,500. As a result, the number of animals that need homes is increasing and in turn making a tough situation even worse for the BLM.  According the BLM, the lifetime cost of an animal is $50,000, and that is without vet bills.. Horses are devastating the land they graze on, in general horses are bad grazers and will eat until there is nothing left. They will even pull up roots and kill whatever is growing –natural wildlife will diminish and the ecosystems will be severely affected. With 46,000 horses and burros to care for, the US Government will spend $2.3 billion on the existing horses (not including population growth.)  Since the Act was created in 1971 the population of wild horses and burros has increased by 2.5 times.  This is in part because the last horse slaughter pants closed in 2007. 

“Between 1992 and 2007, approximately 1 to 2% (75,000 to 150,000 horses) of the domestic equine population in the United States was sent to slaughter each year. Another 10,000 to 20,000 horses were exported to Canada for slaughter and an unknown number were sent to Mexico (6,500 in 2005, 12,000 in 2006, and 45,000 in 2007).  Assuming these numbers are somewhat representative of what occurs annually, then nearly 100 horses either die or are euthanized for every 50 horses that go to slaughter and at least 200,000 equine carcasses must be disposed of annually. Prior to 2007 one third of these were being processed for human consumption, with the remainder being cremated, buried, digested, disposed of in landfills, or rendered.” –AVMA 

The importance of this is the number of horses that were being slaughter was low, but had a large impact. The market for horses is over saturated and this is because that small number of horses made a difference. 

With unadoptable, adoptable, and uncounted horses that call the US home we have a serious over population issue and there are no actions being taken to solve this problem. The horses that are deemed unadoptable, would be candidates for slaughter. If the government decides that a horse cannot be homed with anyone, that horse is a negative impact on the US. Horse rights activist across the country, will say horse slaughter is inhumane and should not happen. Simply because animals should be treated better. In reality, the US treats cows, pigs and chickens all the same way, when it comes to slaughter –not thinking anything of it because people like meat. The difference is, we as a society have labeled horses at pets and that is what makes it so hard to justify slaughtering them.  They have every right to have their own opinion but, what are they doing to solve this problem? Many will say birth control methods are being explored, like castrating a stallion. A simple process that can happen while the horse is standing and is generally referred to as gelding, because after castration they are called geldings. The process with mares is a whole different story. Unlike spaying a female cat or dog, spaying a mare is extremely dangerous. The vet would have to enter the abdominal cavity, and remove the ovaries which is painful and can take a long time to heal. They also have to be put completely under which brings up its own complications –horses cannot lay down for long periods of time because their organs shut down. If we assume that of the wild horses and burros, half are stallions, which would be 23,000 horses to geld. Depending on the vet, it can cost anywhere from $200-$300 to castrate a horse. If we say its $250, it would cost the United States taxpayers $5.75 million. All of this just to stop the breeding of horses, which would take months to do and be a constantly ongoing process until they were all gelded.  

Another factor to consider when discussing horse slaughter, is the safety of these animals, which is a crucial issue. In 2007 when horse slaughter plants closed, it was preceded by the government defunding the FDA to conduct inspections of horse slaughter facilities. Why did they do this? Because the general public doesn’t agree with the idea of horse slaughter. When they hear horse slaughter they think of a back yard pet being killed and suffering. The American Quarter Horse Association –which is the largest single horse breed association in the world, fully supports horse processing. “AQHA supports the humane, USDA supervised end-of-life process as a much better option than starvation, neglect or inhumane treatment inside or outside of the United States.” –AQHA 

The significance of AQHA supporting this, is they are the largest horse association in the world and they are fighting to get in reintroduced into the US. Their support shows that as an association that is well versed in all things horse, this need to happen in the US.

In reality, only about 2% of horses in the United States were slaughtered –this is mostly because of the defunding. That 2% was still around 200,000 horses, and these are not pets. Horses that were slaughtered were mainly racehorses that were not talented enough to be successful, were hurt or were retired. This might seem cruel but what else do they have to do? Horses have been livestock since they came to the United States, they were a means for transportation, and they were currency. This doesn’t mean that people don’t get attached but, ultimately they are for a purpose, they do a job and once they cannot anymore there is no need for them. The American population –for the most part –does not blink an eye at eating a cow but when it comes to eating a horse cry in outrage. Why is this? Taking a look at history, horses were used as a form of transportation. Now, we still use horses for that, but a closer with them and more attached. Not all horses need to be slaughtered, some have loving homes and people to take care of them. At the same time, many do not and there needs to be a solution of the overpopulation of horses in the US. Disposing of horses in the United States can be extremely difficult. In a majority of states burring horses in illegal because it contaminates the water supply.   

"Florida has a statute specifying acceptable methods of disposal so that it's illegal to just leave the animal out in the pasture to decay," says Jeter, "but the rules vary significantly here at a county level." In addition to outlining adequate methods of disposal, many state statutes govern factors such as how long you have to dispose of the carcass or how deeply you must bury it. –the horse.com 

In some states you can burry horses, but not if they were chemically euthanized. So people struggle with what to do, and to cremate a horse you have to pay over $1200 and are left with 11 pounds of ashes. So I ask the American public, what do you want horse owners that have no option to do? Why is the population of wild horses and burros that the Burro of Land Management is overseeing growing so rapidly? Because horse owners have no other option than to turn their horse lose. They just let it go and leave it to be a burden on someone else when there is not a better way to do things. 

While we are talking about the safety of animals, let’s talk about other countries. Mexico and Canada both consume horse meat, and it is normal for them. This means that they go to auctions and buy horses in bulk to take to slaughter houses. Because the United States stopped horse slaughter, these countries have been coming into the US and buying horses to take back to slaughter plants in their own countries. Although the number cannot be exact, approximately 150,000 horses are taken out of the United States every year for slaughter. 

The forced closure of U.S. horse slaughter plants did not eliminate the purchase of U.S. horses for slaughter. Exports of horses to slaughter facilities in Canada and Mexico have grown to more than four times their pre-ban volume. By 2010, the number of horses exported to Canada, Mexico for slaughter was equal to the total number of horses slaughtered domestically (104,899), and those exported for slaughter (32,789) in 2006, the last full year of U.S. slaughter.

A huge issue with this is that Mexico does not have regulations.  Yes, Americans don’t believe in horse slaughter but if we reestablished it in the US we would be able to regulate it. If the FDA could be refunded, they could go to each and every slaughter house and monitor the things being done to horses. Watching videos of what some Mexican slaughter houses are doing is repulsive. But they don’t have regulations and rules to follow, which is a serious issue. Not only are these animals suffering, it could all be avoided by bring it back into the United States. With the defunding of horse slaughter and FDA regulations, this means that transporting horses to slaughter became as easy as driving a regular car. When the government defunded the FDA regulating horse slaughter they inadvertently defunded saving horses from suffering. With so many people from different countries coming into the US to take horses for slaughter in their own countries they pack as many horses as they can into trailers that were meant to hold half as many horses. They pack them in like sardines and then haul them for hours and hours just to be put in kill lots. These poor animals are suffering until they die because these countries do not have regulations. They do not have rules about hauling, or about how they have to treat the animals. The way the that United States put horses life into danger the most by defunding horse slaughter is that now, if a driver is hauling horses across the country and they get pulled over by a police officer, the officer is not allowed to inspect or check on the horses. No one funded by the government can look at animals if the owner say they are going to be taken to a horse slaughter plant. When horse slaughter was stopped, so was any public money that went to horse slaughter. So if an officer pulls over a horse trailer and the driver says  I am taking these horses to a slaughter plant in Mexico or Canada, and the horses on the trailer are dying, starving or are seriously injured the officer can do nothing about it. How sad is this? In addition, the US government is trying to make this right by banning double decker horse trailers, but this is unproductive because double decker trailers are popular in the rodeo community. The problem with them is that because they cannot be inspected, the government wants to shut all of them down. Slaughterhouses will send drivers with double decker cow trailers, which are very unsafe for horses, and can seriously injure them. 

The economic impact horse slaughter had on the US was devastating to the horse 

industry.  

Shortly after the slaughter ban was imposed, participants in the horse markets began to see a decline in horse prices (Government Accountability Office, 2011). Proponents of the ban attributed the softening of the horse market to the economic downturn that began in 2008 and the high cost of feed, not the slaughter plant closures.

If you look at a simple supply and demand curve, you can see that the horse market is extremely over saturated. There are way too many horses in the united states, which is lowering the price of them. With the surplus of horses in the US, breeding is becoming easier than ever, and the animals being produced are not up to many industry standards.  Breeders cannot make money because buying a horse is easier than ever, and significantly cheaper than it had been in the past fifty years. In the same breath, in the hunter under saddle industry the horse prices are at an all-time high because there are so many horses. It can be confusing but basically there are a lot of horses in the US, and you can either get one for close to nothing, or have to pay a lot. This is because the breeding is going downhill and the good ones are rare. 

Lastly, let us discuss money. The United States does not consume horsemeat, but many other countries do. We could be making money exporting horse meat. Instead, we are spending millions of dollars a year to take care of horses that are just going to die eventually.

“The U.S., while breeding an abundance of horses, has not made any provisions for their disposal. Anti-slaughter activists would like all excess horses to be cared for, but have not designated who would pay what Robert Lawrence of the Equine Industry Program at the University of Louisville estimates to be $400 million a year.” –New York Times

 I am not saying I would take me horse to a slaughter plant and let someone somewhere enjoy his meat. However, there is a serious problem in the US and people don’t have anywhere to go to get. Animal rights activist want to believe that all of the horses in the US can be taken care of, but do not seem to consider who will pay for it or where they are to go. Over population is becoming a large issue in the US, and with the price of horses at an all-time low we can tell that the market is over saturated. When all the signs point to reintroducing horse slaughter, why not?  I have horses, and have had a horse die, and I would not have ever taken him to a horse slaughter plant.   A of people do not have this option though. People need an option. This a perfect solution, and can take the suffering away from horses that are abandoned and starving. When people have to other option but to turn their horse loose, there is a problem in the US. Reintroducing horse slaughter would solve this problem for a lot of people.
