PrintWhat would have happened to the approximately 130,000 horses that were slaughtered in 2010 if slaughter hadn’t been an option? Would banning slaughter create a huge influx of unwanted horses? Would the horses potentially suffer even worse fates, starving to death or being let loose? The questions are even harder to answer since 2007, the first year without domestic slaughter, was also the year of a major economic downturn.
The Government Accountability Office report highlighted the plight of rescue organizations, stating that, “Officials said horse rescue operations in their states are at, or near, maximum capacity, with some taking on more horses than they can properly care for since the cessation of domestic slaughter.”
“There is a lot of anecdotal information about neglect and abandonment,” said Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society of the United States. “A lot of factors could contribute to that. One is an increased awareness of the public to report neglect. We get more calls, so we don’t attribute it just to the economy—we attribute it to that higher awareness. Colorado passed a law requiring people to report neglect if they saw it. Even if we accept there is an increase in neglect, the number of horses going to slaughter has not changed. It’s hard to see how we could attribute those increases. Slaughter is still an option, and it hasn’t gone away. If people are neglecting their horses, it’s not because they can’t send their horses to slaughter.”
Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a professor of animal behavior at the Tufts Cummings School Of Veterinary Medicine (Mass.) and proponent for a full slaughter ban, believes the unwanted horse crisis is a myth more than a real issue.
“People who want slaughter say, ‘You would be overrun with horses! They would be running loose down the freeway,’ ” Dodman said. “There’s not a shred of evidence that [the closure of U.S. slaughterhouses] is linked to abuse and neglect. When the economy is good, there’s less mistreatment of horses. When it’s bad, there’s more. Their argument doesn’t hold true. In 1990, there were over 300,000 horses sent to slaughter. In 2002, the number dropped to 42,000. You know why the number went down? It’s because the demand went down.”
Dr. Tom Lenz, past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners and former chair of the Unwanted Horse Coalition, disagrees, saying the 100,000 extra horses left suffering if the slaughter pipeline closed would create a bigger problem than trying to solve the current transportation issues. Many horses that head to slaughter are first picked up at auctions by “kill buyers” after they’re too old or too lame to serve a riding purpose. Some have major injuries or illnesses. The AAEP estimated it would require an additional 2,700 rescue organizations, if each could take an average of 30 horses, to accommodate just the first year of a closed pipeline to Canada and Mexico.
“Those horses [sent to slaughter] epitomize the unwanted horse problem,” Lenz said. “If we can’t find a way to solve the unwanted horse problem so no horse goes to a plant, I think as long as the horses are humanely euthanized at the slaughterhouses, I think it’s OK. But I think the day could come when they wouldn’t be needed.”
