They Slaughter Horses, Don't They?

Sometimes a solution isn't really a solution. What might seem like progress isn't.

That's the case with the end of horse slaughter in the U.S.

SHIPSHEWANA, Ind. -- At the weekly horse auction here, No. 274, a handsome chestnut-colored draft horse, looked at the surrounding men while being led into a small ring. Two of the men looked back, calculating how much meat the animal’s carcass would yield, and started bidding accordingly.

There is no pretense about what happens to the horses sold in this area of the auction, known as the kill pen. Just a few months ago, many of them would have met their end at a slaughterhouse in neighboring Illinois. Now almost all will be shipped to Canada and killed there.

Amid pressure from animal rights groups, horse slaughter virtually ended in the United States last year, as courts upheld state laws banning it in Texas and Illinois, home to the nation’s last three horse slaughterhouses.

But there have been unintended consequences, including more grueling travel for tens of thousands of horses now being sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico, where, animal advocates say, they sometimes face more gruesome deaths.

...The slaughterhouse closings themselves may have added to the population of the unwanted. In some parts of the country, auctioneers say, the closings have contributed to a drop in the price of horses at the low end of the market, and the added distance in the shipping of horses bound for slaughter, combined with higher fuel costs, means that some small or thin horses are no longer worth the fuel it takes to transport them.

...But opponents of horse slaughter say its domestic demise is a victory, if an incomplete one, in their fight to protect animals they see as devoted companions.

“It’s a step closer to the long-term goal of banning slaughter in North America,” said Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States. “There are fewer horses slaughtered.”

...For many horses, though, export means hundreds more miles of strenuous transit in large trailers. “It’s difficult for them to keep their balance, they’re often crowded, they have no access to food or water while en route,” said Timothy Cordes, a senior veterinarian with the Agriculture Department.

Of particular concern to advocates is the treatment of the horses once they reach Mexico, to which exports have more than tripled. American protections simply do not apply there, Dr. Cordes said.

The American slaughterhouses killed horses quickly by driving steel pins into their brains, a method the American Veterinary Medical Association considers humane. Workers in some Mexican plants, by contrast, disable them by stabbing them with knives to sever their spinal cords, said Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.

“My worst nightmare has happened,” Dr. Grandin said. “This is an example of well-intentioned but very bad unintended consequences.”

How terribly gruesome! Steel pins in the horses' brains, stabbed with knives to sever their spinal cords.

Horse slaughter has become an extremely controversial and polarizing issue in the equine community.

...Animal rights groups are pushing for federal legislation that would forbid the sale and transport of horses for human consumption, thereby banning the export market. Bills await action in both houses of Congress.

In the meantime, the debate over horse slaughter continues to divide the equine community, pitting organizations against one another. Many thoroughbred associations support both the domestic slaughter ban and the proposed legislation; the American Quarter Horse Association is against them. The issue is so controversial that the American Horse Council, a national lobbying group for the horse industry, declares itself neutral.

Emotions run very high on what's really the best approach to take.

According to the Agriculture Department, 105,000 American horses were estimated to have been slaughtered in 2007, some inhumanely and many after great suffering.

That cruelty is extremely disturbing.

For some perspective on the scale of the slaughter, here are the numbers of abortions performed yearly in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade.