Horse, thou art truly a creature without equal, for thou fliest without wings and conquerest without sword. ~ The Koran
When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword. ~ The Koran
And God took a handful of southerly wind, blew his breath upon it, and created the horse. ~ Bedouin legend
A man on a horse is spiritually as well as physically bigger than a man on foot. ~ John Steinbeck
Some quotes that I thought truly express the beauty of a horse.
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As far as horse slaughter plants, every year since 2005 the Agriculture Department appropriations bill has included a provision defunding USDA inspections of horse meat for human consumption. That has kept horse slaughtering plants from operating in the United States.
However, the bill President Obama signed into law did not include this defunding provision. Opponents said it could cost U.S. taxpayers about $5 million a year to subsidize government inspections of foreign-owned horse slaughter plants that open in the United States.
However, the bill President Obama signed into law did not include this defunding provision. Opponents said it could cost U.S. taxpayers about $5 million a year to subsidize government inspections of foreign-owned horse slaughter plants that open in the United States.
Currently, unwanted U.S. horses are transported to slaughtering plants in either Canada or Mexico, and the meat is sold to foreign markets. And guess what? They had been and will continue to be transported to Canada and Mexico, whether or not new plants open in the U.S. or not. The only way to stop it is to ban international and interstate transport of horses. As we know from American Business Practices 101, the shortest distance between two points is the cheapest, not necessarily the domestic, location.
Oh but it's the bad economy's fault, we can no longer take care of our animals, we whine, it's a quality of life issue for the horses. So the slaughterhouse is a better alternative? Give me a break. There are more humane options.
Bad economy or not, we still have a responsibility to those in our care. If there is a rise in neglect and abandonment of horses, it's due to our long-term recession, not because slaughter in the U.S. isn't available! Horse slaughterers were still killing horses for profit; just sending them to Canada and Mexico; the hundreds of thousands of horses were not just comprised of abandoned and abused animals, but former racehorses, carriage horses, wild Mustangs, etc., none of which are raised for food under food safety regulations as with the cattle industry. This has got to be the lamest (duck), ill-thought out, quick and dirty campaign ever, because it all had to be done before the end of December when our wonderful congressmen go on vacation (again! Nice work if you can get it). President Obama wasn't even in the country when the bill was signed by auto-pen. Must everything be reduced to dollar signs in America? No wonder we have such a reputation for superconsumption - bigger, better, faster, stronger (sorry, Daft Punk!) I'd hate to see our beautiful, unique landscape become nothing but concrete and asphalt from one coast to the other, and a barren, over-farmed, over-grazed and over-mined wasteland in between, a spiritually dead place.
Horses have been much venerated over the centuries, since the earliest of times, in all cultures, for the help and benefits they have provided mankind. It's the same today, where they even are used therapeutically for the disabled, much like seeing-eyes dogs are. Horses over the centuries have given mankind freedom, power and mobility up until the industrial age; and they are so enduring a symbol that the association continues to this day (where do you think the term "horsepower" comes from.)
It's terrible thing to disrespect them and to reduce them to dollar signs for profit. Horse slaughter creates more slaughter by creating a market for more animals (talk about perverse incentive!). As far as wild horses "starving and dying of thirst and dehydration" in the wild without slaughterhouses as "humane intervention", don't think for a minute that horses on the long death march to slaughterhouses in cramped trucks are given ample food and water (it's required by law to have been withheld for 28 hours). There has even been legislation proposed to divert water supplies away from wild horses to get rid of them!
These horse-slaughter profiteers don't have anyone's welfare in mind but their own. Any wildlife biologist will tell you that animals in the wild go back into the natural food chain, as is nature's design. I have been advised by wildlife experts to leave the injured and dying to nature if they cannot be saved, where they become food for natural predators. Animals have a great will to survive, and we should never arrogantly decide what's best for them.
Fix the economy, and don't buy the kids that cute little horsie or pony unless you can make a lifetime commitment to having a companion animal (dogs and cats too). We are a throw-away society. Take the kids to visit a working farm to learn about animals; they will love it. It's obvious - if there were any merit to this barbaric practice being brought back, Congress wouldn't have had to sneak it in at the eleventh hour as a bargaining chip for another stopgap budget measure. Is this the best we can do to 'create jobs' in our country? How low can we sink.
With all the current fuss about too much taxation in our country, this action is really questionable. Between deciding whether or not tomato paste qualifies as a vegetable for school lunches (Congress is too cheap to include actual vegetables for federally-funded school lunch menus) and destroying our iconic American horses so that we can raise beef, beef and more beef for an ever-increasing human population, government isn't doing its job. Meanwhile, our Congresspeople always leave office much wealthier than when they came in - why is that? They are fighting the tax increase on the wealthiest Americans proposal tooth and claw - because they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Continue to insult our intelligence. Vote the bums out in 2012.
If a company were run this way, the top management would be fired. (Hmmm, but they'd lay off all the underlings and escape with a golden parachute.....)
Keep the focus on jobs and cleaning up government and Wall Street!
I keep reading vague references to 'tribal' and 'tribes' in all of the horse slaughter support propaganda, but I don't think so. Read up; notice any familiar names? Yep, that's right - "Slaughterhouse Sue" Wallis of Wyoming.
Now, some good news. What a lovely, creative solution:
Winter Coats - an FWP employee herding bison back into Yellowstone National Park. Livestock interests and conservationists say they've reached agreement on eventually allowing bison into some parts of Montana,
where they have been absent for decades. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
Yes, our American West is a romantic thing of beauty, and we are the better for preserving it. I hope that ranching interests and conservationists can continue to work together to reach a beautiful solution such as this.
UPDATE: The ignorance and insensitivity surrounding this issue, and floating around the internet, is profound.
First of all, speaking only for myself (and I really resent others speaking for me or my motives in wanting to treat a noble animal well). No, I do not see a horse as "Mr. Ed", "Black Beauty", "Seabiscuit" or "My Little Pony", nor do I attribute anthropomorphic feelings to them, as I have also seen sanctimoniously tut-tutted about. In my actual experience with horses, as well as other animals - and I am amazed everyday with the intelligence and affection, loyalty and feeling they are capable of, if only we would take the time to look - whether cats, dogs, pigs, chickens, geese or horses, sheep and cattle, birds - the list goes on and on. New discoveries are made every day, such as crows having the intelligence to build simple tools. A Rhode Island Red rooster can kill a fox or dog who threatens his flock (swoon.) And a rooster's crow in the morning is such a beautiful, natural alarm clock. Our family doctor raises vegetables and sheep with llama "watchdogs", his wife spins the wool and drives for miles to help rescue llamas who need new homes because their owners can no longer care for them (in one instance due to an elderly woman who could no longer care for them.) At another farm, the free-range pigs do an good thing for the environment by gobbling up invasive species of plants.
I used to be a "sorta" inner city girl who dreamed of farmland and ranches, and today I live in such a beautiful area. When I want the stimulation of the city, I'm still close enough - but as they say, it's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
I used to be a "sorta" inner city girl who dreamed of farmland and ranches, and today I live in such a beautiful area. When I want the stimulation of the city, I'm still close enough - but as they say, it's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
We have come along way since the days of René Descartes, who in the 17th century philosophised that animals had no feeling or souls, and set out to prove it with cruel experiments. Seems the creatures without souls these days are humans. If a bond of love is created between a human and a pet, it is natural and normal, or if people honor horses because they have benefited people in their lives and contributed greatly to the advancement of civilization, all throughout history. No, I do not think we are entitled to eat anything, lay waste to and profit from anything that moves on this planet, just because we can.
Why stop with horses then? In certain parts of the world, people eat dogs and cats - if a "My Little Pony" theme is appropriate to make light of such a terrible thing as horse slaughter, then perhaps a "Hello Kitty" theme might be fun to post when people are as outraged about that? Every year, in another of our dirty little secrets, millions of faithful kitty cats and man's best friends are abandoned, abused and in our current economic downturn (that just doesn't seem to end!) people can't always care for them either. I'm sure statistics will show more of them are being abandoned and neglected as well. Isn't there a market where $$$ can be made here too? (Insert sarcasm here)
No, we don't do this, because we just can't stomach that kind of thing, because it's too close to home for most of us who have pets. There's a "sentimental connection" there, isn't there.
You can see just how absurd the argment to bring back horse slaughter is when you look at it from this viewpoint. The argument just isn't logical - and it's motivated by greed. Most of you I'll bet don't have horses so of course it's a non-issue to leave to the folks "out there" somewhere else to worry about, and your politicians are banking on what you don't know in many ways. Some children barely know where milk and eggs come from.
PETA has also done a tremendous disservice to the plight of horses with their latest statement as well by agreeing that slaughterhouses are a humane alternative to suffering, when in reality they are nothing but houses of horrors for animals. I know they have done many good things for animals, but they have made some really questionable moves in how they deliver their messages to people, and I sometimes wonder if they care more about their own self-promotion and agenda than the welfare of animals. I won't go so far as to call them terrorists, but you get the idea, (especially when we consider how they got their start over in the UK using terror tactics); some of their methods are counterproductive and they give the rest of us animal advocates a bad name because of it.
Significant advances in our society's treatment of animals can be attributed to PETA US, including stopping all car-crash tests on animals worldwide, getting more than 1,000 cosmetics companies to stop testing on rabbits and other animals, and closing massive horse-slaughter operations in the US as well as an international wildlife trafficking outfit.
The goal of trying to get everyone to be vegetarian isn't realistic, but ensuring that animals used for food are treated as humanely as possible is. I no longer eat red meat myself, but everyone has to choose for themselves what they will eat. As human predators at the top of the food chain, we really aren't that different from a wolf eating a caribou or an elk, except that we have the capacity for empathy, compassion, mercy and humane treatment of our prey, or at least I thought we did. Don't cruelly sacrifice or hold hostage one creature while you debate theoretical ethics of meat-eating in general from ivory towers, more animals will be being inhumanely destroyed.
In an ideal world, maybe nobody would eat, harass, enslave or otherwise use other creatures - but we don't live in an ideal world, far from it. A better goal would be to concentrate on ensuring that animals are respected and treated as well and as humanely as possible, and not consider them entitlements, but to be used for food and medical experiments as little as possible, and with as little interference to them in the wild as possible. Zoos and especially circuses are outmoded holdovers from Victorian times when animals from exotic land were curiosities, and cause great stress to the animals, and have little relevance in today's society except to hold endangered species that we are making extinct in the wild. What to do about animals we have introduced into the world such as pets and heritage breeds of livestock, where do they fit in the PETA utopia? Like children, we created them and they are here. Join the real world. Stop courting celebs, and making public spectacles that do absolutely no good and do something practical.
The fact remains that this barbaric practice was outlawed in 2008, with assurances from our President that we would never again see horse slaughtering plants operating in our country, which was a practical step in the right direction for humane treatment of all animals. It was only the first step in ongoing legislation which hopefully will stop the transport of horses to Canada and Mexico eventually. Why advocate a step backwards, PETA? If change is to come, it is a process; it cannot be forced on anyone.
US slaughterhouses being more "humane" than those in Canada or Mexico is a subject for debate. PETA themselves have uncovered numerous violations and incidents of abuse and animal cruelty in US plants over the years than we can list. We've had and still may have conflicts of interest with meat industry people serving on their own oversight boards. And with our country clamoring for less government regulation than more, we may never know what goes on - I'd hate to have to put it to the test and have the animals pay the price. Don't insult people's intelligence - this is pure, self-serving hypocrisy on PETA's part. Whether slaughterhouses exist in the US or outside is only the difference between bad and worse.
Horses are not bred for food, but they are bred for their estrogen (PREMARIN) for treatment of post-menopausal symptoms in older women. PREMARIN stands for "pregnant mare's urine" - and means just what it says - the mares are kept pregnant to produce estrogen and then eventually destroyed along with their young when they are of no more "use", and sent to slaughter. This practice has to stop - it's mostly unnecessary, because menopause is a natural part of a woman's life and has been since the dawn of humanity - until somebody (a man) decided older women should be put out to pasture without it. Menopause in ancient cultures was just as revered a time in a woman's life as any - even more so, because it was considered a time of great wisdom. In our modern, youth-obsessed culture this sadly is no longer the case. It presents health and cancer risks because naturally a woman was not meant to have higher estrogen levels after a certain age. As a woman I won't take part in this unnecessary practice. In the cases where estrogen therapy is necessary, there are synthetic alternatives and modern biologic, plant-based alternatives.
Being told from day one that we are (self-proclaimed) God's highest creation by certain religions and minimizing that God, or however you think of a higher power, created every creature on our magnificent planet, it's no wonder we behave as we do to other creatures and the environment - and we've also created hell on earth because of it. (The Vatican took time out from what I am sure is its busy schedule to come out against the perfectly innocent movie "Avatar" because they claimed it celebrated the "evil" worship of nature. How ridiculous is that. Meanwhile, they should be concentrating of eliminating the evils their priests have perpetrated on children.)
No other animal but man has ever killed his own kind en masse, like in wars and the Holocaust, or the enslavement and genocide of native people, fully cognizant of and purely for evil means, greed or land grabs, rationalized away by "manifest destiny".
No other animal but man has ever killed his own kind en masse, like in wars and the Holocaust, or the enslavement and genocide of native people, fully cognizant of and purely for evil means, greed or land grabs, rationalized away by "manifest destiny".
Civilization or the natural world? I'll take nature, thank you.
Do you really think your average American worker would want to get their hands dirty with this kind of dirty work? Or want one in their backyard? (NIMBY Syndrome) Slaughterhouse work has been by and large done by illegal immigrants, another thing hypocritally decried by our wonderful politicians. People will be watching, and ready to shut these places down if they do use illegal labor.
An Abattoir by Any Other Name ...
Is still a slaughterhouse. That said, there will be times when a horse will need to be humanely be put down, whether due to illness or injury - by a veteriarian. An local or regional abattoir on or accessible by a family farm is one thing, but large-scale factory slaughterhouses are inherently inhumane. Until retired racehorses and wild Mustangs are rounded up from the 'goodness of hearts', and not dollar signs on the hoof, I'll remain skeptical about altruistic motives. Horses are not always "anthropomorphized" - they are appreciated for the qualities unique to them. In some cases, you wouldn't want to ascribe human qualities to them!
In the 1940s (70 years ago!), it was true that people turned to horsemeat - out of desperation. We were in the midst of a world war and recovering from the Great Depression (our present economy may well be driven there yet, but thankfully we aren't at the moment!) and beef was in short supply. You can hardly say that today. Any meat from horses today is solely for export, not for people in the United States. We would like to see progress, not regress.
Anyone who keeps horses knows there is a lot of work involved, and it truly is a labor of love. When a horse where I live needed major surgery, the entire community contributed to her.
The employment level is the lowest it has been since 2009 - but if this is the alternative - we ain't that desperate yet.
Information About The New England Heritage Breeds Conservancy
An Abattoir by Any Other Name ...
Is still a slaughterhouse. That said, there will be times when a horse will need to be humanely be put down, whether due to illness or injury - by a veteriarian. An local or regional abattoir on or accessible by a family farm is one thing, but large-scale factory slaughterhouses are inherently inhumane. Until retired racehorses and wild Mustangs are rounded up from the 'goodness of hearts', and not dollar signs on the hoof, I'll remain skeptical about altruistic motives. Horses are not always "anthropomorphized" - they are appreciated for the qualities unique to them. In some cases, you wouldn't want to ascribe human qualities to them!
In the 1940s (70 years ago!), it was true that people turned to horsemeat - out of desperation. We were in the midst of a world war and recovering from the Great Depression (our present economy may well be driven there yet, but thankfully we aren't at the moment!) and beef was in short supply. You can hardly say that today. Any meat from horses today is solely for export, not for people in the United States. We would like to see progress, not regress.
Anyone who keeps horses knows there is a lot of work involved, and it truly is a labor of love. When a horse where I live needed major surgery, the entire community contributed to her.
The employment level is the lowest it has been since 2009 - but if this is the alternative - we ain't that desperate yet.
Information About The New England Heritage Breeds Conservancy
