Special to The Legal Animal. The American Horse
Slaughter Prevention Act needs your immediate
support.
Warning: This article contains graphic and
disturbing material.
For many horses, the road to the slaughterhouse
starts at the auction yard
Spent racehorses, wild Mustangs, and unwanted
“by-products” of the
Premarin industry. Horses who are sick, lame,
malnourished, elderly, or simply poorly trained.
Family pets who have served humans with dedication
all their lives, but are now thrown away because
they are no longer useful.
The horses come from all walks of life, but the
common denominator is that they are all terrified –
and their fate is at the mercy of the highest
bidder.
Unfortunately, mercy is often in short supply.
For those horses not lucky enough to be purchased by
a private buyer – or if they are luckier still, a
responsible horse rescue – their future often rests
in the hands of “killer” buyers, who win the right
to their flesh for a few hundred dollars.
“Their whole life just changed in a flash. All of a
sudden they weren’t someone’s beloved pet any more,
they became this commodity, this thing worth a few
bucks,”
says Jill Starr, founder of
Lifesavers,
a Mustang rescue in Lancaster, California.
Starr used to frequent the horse auctions, looking
for Mustangs who she might be able to save from “the
killer buyer.” She wrote about these experiences in
A Day at the Auction
Since she began in 1997, Starr has rescued 410
horses. Today, her sanctuary is overflowing with 150
horses, and she no longer needs to go to auctions to
look for horses to rescue – they come to her in all
too great a number.
However, she will never forget her experiences
choosing horses at the auction yard – and looking
into the eyes of those she couldn’t save.
“There are a lot of tears,” she says. “I have
learned over the years that you have to think of the
ones in your trailer, the ones you have saved and
given life to, because if you dwell on those you
couldn’t save, you would just have to dig a hole and
put your head in the ground.”
Starr describes the fear of the horses who are
shoved into the chaotic atmosphere of the auction
yard, often abandoned their by owners who are hoping
to make a quick buck from their disposal.
“From the time they reach the auction, these horses
are exposed to all sorts of nasty things – other
horses, stress, panic, slippery floors, high-energy
levels. They get shoved around and basically treated
like cattle,” she says. “These horses’ eyes are
bulging out of their heads, it is very scary for
them. . .but [the handlers] really don’t think of
them as living, feeling beings.”
Knowing that a rideable horse is likely to fetch
more money, workers at the auction house often try
to jump on the horses and make them perform for the
crowd – even if the horses are sick or lame and
shouldn’t be ridden.
“It is all very frightening and confusing, so
obviously the horses don’t perform their best if
they are riding horses. But [the handlers] will ride
them if they can – you see big people on little
horses, people riding horses that shouldn’t be
gotten on, trying to force them into a circle,”
Starr says.
In just a few minutes of bidding in the auction
ring, a horse’s fate is decided. If no one is
willing to bid above the “meat price” of about 35
cents a pound, the horse usually goes to the “kill
pen” to await transport to the slaughterhouse.
In California, a ballot initiative passed in 1998
prevents the direct sale of horses to slaughter, so
the horses there go a more circuitous route, passing
to new ownership in a different state before going
to their death.
In other states, the road to the slaughterhouse is
also lengthy, since there are only three horse
slaughterhouses in the United States – two in Texas,
and one in Illinois.
Although veterinarians usually recommend that horses
be taken off trailers every few hours for food and
water during transport, the United States Department
of Agriculture regulations allow horses to be
shipped for 28 hours straight without rest, food, or
water.
So, after languishing for days in the holding pens
at the auction house, horses are often crammed onto
stock trailers for another long chapter in their
journey of terror.
Since every pound of horseflesh is worth money,
brokers crowd as many horses as possible into a load
– often using double-decker trucks designed for
cattle and pigs, which prevent the horses from even
holding their heads in a normal position.
The combination of slippery surfaces and frightened
horses mean animals are often trampled and injured
en route, and must lie injured or dying until they
reach their destination. As “flight animals,”
experts say horses suffer much more in the intensive
confinement of transport than do similarly
transported cows and pigs.
Then the horses reach their final stop.
Very few unbiased observers have ever seen the
operations of a slaughterhouse, as the
slaughterhouses refuse to open their doors to
activists or the press. Therefore, most of what
humane advocates know about what goes on inside the
slaughterhouse has come from undercover video of the
agonizing and terrifying process.
The animals are forced into a narrow chute where
they can’t turn around, and have no choice but to
march slowly toward their deaths, their fear
increasing as the sounds, smells, and sight of death
surrounds them. When they reach the end of the line,
they are shot by a captive-bolt gun, which often
requires several attempts to kill them or render
them senseless, sometimes not completely doing the
job before the rest of the slaughter commences.
What a brutal end for such a noble creature.
Starr summarizes it this way: “I’ve heard people
call horse slaughter a necessary evil. I say ‘no,’
it is just evil.”
Last year, more than 90,000 horses in the United
States experienced a fate similar to the one
described above. Such practices can be stopped once
and for all with passage of the American Horse
Slaughter Prevention Act.
This legislation could come up for a vote soon
before the U.S. House of Representatives. Please act
now to help ensure its passage.
Check
here to see if your Congressional representative
is a cosponsor of the bill. If so, please contact
your representative’s office, thank them for their
support, and urge them to do everything they can to
push the legislation. If not, please contact your
representative’s office by phone, email, or fax and
urge them to support the bill. You can find
information about how to contact your representative
at
Congress.org , or see the
Society for Animal Protective Legislation for
more information on how to support the ban.