USDA Approves Horse Slaughter, Despite Overwhelming Opposition

Today, in a mystifying and infuriating decision, the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted an inspection permit to a discredited horse slaughter plant operator in New Mexico, bringing the nation closer to its first horse slaughter operation since federal courts and state lawmakers shuttered the last three U.S.-based plants in 2007. The USDA has let it be known that it may also approve horse slaughter plants in Iowa and Missouri next week.

Consider these facts, each of which should have been sufficient to dissuade the USDA from proceeding with this inspection permit for New Mexico.

• The USDA granted the permit even though Republican Governor Susanna Martinez and Democratic Attorney General Gary King oppose the opening of the facility in their state. 
• The department took this action even though Congress, in its 2014 agriculture spending bill, is poised to forbid the USDA from spending money on horse slaughter inspections. In June, both the House and Senate appropriations committees approved amendments to defund any horse slaughter plants.
• The USDA is moving ahead even though the Obama Administration, in its 2014 budget proposal to Congress, recommended a defunding of horse slaughter plants. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has called for a “third way” in dealing with unwanted horses and expressed opposition to horse slaughter.
• Approval was granted even though The HSUS submitted a petition to the USDA that provides incontrovertible evidence that horses are routinely fed or dosed with more than 100 different drugs unfit for human consumption. 
• The USDA pursued this course of action just months after Europeans learned the hard way that horse slaughter operators and meat traders substituted their product for beef, throwing the European beef market and consumer confidence in the safety and integrity of the food supply into a tailspin. 
• Horse slaughter is being approved in spite of polling information indicating that an overwhelming majority of the American public – to the tune of 80 percent – opposes slaughtering American horses for human consumption.

I’ve been asked why the Administration would take this action, contradicting its own stated goal to end horse slaughter. And I cannot explain it, other than the lawyers at the USDA driving the train and offering a highly legalistic view of the controversy, given that Valley Meat has sued the USDA for unreasonably delaying action on its application. We seem to have a case where the decision-makers have decided they are obligated to grant the permit when there is a fact pattern that screams at them from every angle that they should not grant that permit.

Kathy Milani/The HSUSHorses held in

 export pens before transported for slaughter.

The Administration wouldn’t grant an inspection permit for a dog slaughterhouse even if the application for the permit was properly filled out and the operator hired a lawyer to compel action. Local and national opposition to such an idea would be more than convincing in compelling the USDA to keep any plant from opening up and sucking dogs into the slaughter lines.
The HSUS will work with state authorities to block this plant from opening, and will join Front Range Equine Rescue in taking the USDA to court on this issue. 
Horse slaughter is not humane euthanasia and is a betrayal of our trusted companions. The entire pipeline of horse slaughter, including auctions and transport in crowded trailers in freezing cold or oppressive heat, is abusive. The slaughter process itself is horribly cruel and many horses suffer during the misguided and often repeated attempts to render them unconscious. 
Sensible policy makers don’t want to see a bloodbath in the United States resume. Let’s hope we can hold off slaughter until the defund language, expected to take effect in a few months, becomes law.
Now is the time to express your concern to your members of Congress and urge them to pass the Safeguard American Food Exports Act to shut the door on horse slaughter once and for all.

Well, folks, I guess it really is time to kill all the lawyers. I'm just kidding - aren't I?

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Action Alert! Observations and Opinions of a Horse Killer (Parts 1 & 2)

These videos are interviews of a horse killer, who for decades, bought and shipped horses to slaughter for human consumption. He and his associates also rounded up Wild Horses for slaughter.

After leaving the business, his conclusion was that the entire industry was inhumane, cruel, lacking in transparency and with a profit margin was so small that it could never be regulated to be humane by any standards.That this was a business that was good for neither people nor horses.

In a word, exactly what we have been saying for 30 years. We have enough documentation to sink the Titanic, but somehow that is overlooked in favor the anti-slaughter disinformation - for which there is no documentation - that is parroted by the pro-slaughter horse registries like the AQHA and the Jockey Club and Big Agriculture as if ending horse slaughter for human consumption could somehow affect them.

I personally find it impossible to believe the entire animal/Ag industries can actually believe the scare tactics of the queen of slaughter mouthpieces, Ms. Sue Wallis and the so-called "United Horsemen" when they claim that we all are "animal rights radicals" bent on closing down all animal Ag and are paid by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and PETA. This is just too idiotic for words and I don't believe this "slippery slope" junk is actually taken seriously by Big Ag. However, it's a convenient excuse for whatever it is they are really afraid of - whatever that may be - and, who knows, it might be true, right?

Actually, no, it can't be true - not even close. But - for whatever reason - they seem to be willing to risk not only horrific cruelty to our horses, the health of consumers overseas eating the meat from a non-regulated non-food animal.They even seem to be willing to severely damage the credibility of our food safety regulations, and, in fact, our entire meat industry. If they can champion the continued export of horse meat that is tainted with numerous substances - phenylbutazone (bute) being the most widely known - without blinking an eye, why should we believe they would feel entirely differently about other contaminated meat products? I'm a confirmed beef eater, but anyone would have to wonder. Frankly, I find it shocking.

Even more shocking is the way these Deep Pockets industries can manipulate Congress to the point that they have been able to block any anti-slaughter legislation for years with no reasonable reason. When a small minority of the people in the horse industry can influence the animal/Ag industry to use their might to block the will of the great majority of Americans who consider the continuation of horse slaughter for human consumption - and that's what we're talking about here, human consumption - a disgrace, well, Houston, we have a problem.

Part 1


Part 2



I ask you in the strongest possible terms to send these videos not only to your own Congress people, but also to the leadership of both the House and Senate and the ranking members of the Committees where both S. 1176 in the Senate and H.R. 2966 are now sitting - and where they will stay, blocked like all the bills before them unless we let Congress know that 80% of the American people want horse slaughter for human consumption stopped and stopped now. Contact these people in Congress and continue to contact them about this issue. Our opponents may be a minority, but they are well organized and well funded. For all the info you need go to: POPVOX.com

 We however do have an huge advantage that the horse bleeders will never even understand. They are doing what they are doing for profit. We are doing what we are doing for our horses. And that makes all the difference in the world.

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More Roundups Planned Despite Pleas from Congress

This is it, people. If the BLM is allowed to continue the roundups scheduled for this year, it will mark the end of the line for America’s Wild Horses. In the unprecedentedly aggressive roundups so far this year, the BLM has taken has taken every herd they’ve “gathered” below the level of genetic viability - in short, they left so few horses that the gene pools in the herds are too small for long term survival.

Craig Downer, the famed wildlife ecologist, has warned of this for years, and here it is. The BLM knows exactly what it is doing - make no mistake. They want the horses off the range. ALL of them. Then they can expand existing mining operations, start new mining on pristine land and start blasting the way for the Ruby pipeline - carrying BP gas, among others - across five states.

If the BLM is not stopped - NOW - our Wild Horses will be extinct. And we will have paid for it with OUR taxes. Is this really what America has come to?

Amplify’d from www.8newsnow.com

Chief Investigative Reporter George Knapp and Chief Photojournalist Matt Adams

I-Team: More Roundups Planned Despite Pleas from Congress

I-Team: More Roundups Planned Despite Pleas from Congress 3:36

LAS VEGAS -- Government contractors have fired up their helicopters for yet another roundup of Nevada wild horses. The latest gather targets a remote area north of Ely, Nevada.

Four more roundup operations are on the schedule in our state this year. They will not only thin the herds, but wipe them out altogether.

2010 already ranks as one of the most aggressive in the history of Bureau of Land Management horse roundups, with a lot more to come. Operations which proved deadly for the herds have already scooped up thousands of mustangs from public ranges, but with no commensurate reduction in the number of private cattle allowed to stay.

The next round seems are designed to wipe out the horses altogether.

See more at www.8newsnow.com

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