But there's one thing to Americans that horses are not: food.
That's the reason why the U.S. Senate voted 69-28 on Sept. 20, to ban the slaughter of American horses. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a veterinarian by profession, and Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.V., introduced an amendment to the agriculture spending bill that prohibits the use of tax dollars to promote horse slaughter for food exports.
The House of Representatives passed an identical amendment in June, by an overwhelming vote of 269-158. With two landslide votes and identical language passing in both chambers, we hope this ban will be retained when the entire Agriculture Appropriations bill goes to the conference committee.
It certainly should be and we hope that Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, who sits on this final conference committee, will ensure that no tax dollars are used to promote the merciless slaughter of American horses to satisfy the demand for horse meat in other countries.
Most Americans would be surprised to learn that nearly 100,000 horses each year face a grim and painful end. "Killer buyers" (middlemen for slaughterhouses) deliberately purchase horses from well-intentioned families who believe that their horse is going to a good home and frequently have no idea that their beloved companion animal is slated for slaughter.
These animals are loaded into tight quarters on trucks and shipped, sometimes 1,000 miles or more, to one of three horse slaughterhouses in the United States - two in Texas and one in Illinois - or to one of the slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico. Once there, they are prodded onto the slaughterhouse floor where they are hoisted up by a rear leg and then bled out with a sharp cut to the throat.
The flesh is then frozen, packed and exported to countries such as Belgium, France, Italy or Japan, where horse meat remains popular.
Some would claim that horse slaughter is a "humane" end for an old or sick animal. But it costs an average of only $50 to $250 to have a horse humanely euthanized and disposed of, and that is a cost that every owner of a horse must be willing to bear if they have accepted the responsibility of keeping a horse. That is, after all, only a fraction of what it costs to keep a horse as a companion or a work animal.
All of the groups backing the effort to end horse slaughter, including The Humane Society of the United States, National Show Horse Registry, National Thoroughbred Racing Association, National Steeplechase Association and Churchill Downs, recognize that horses deserve better.
And local residents and public officials where horse slaughterhouses are present recognize that these facilities are noxious, polluting blights on their communities. The mayor of Kaufman, Texas, home to the Dallas Crown horse slaughterhouse, wrote that "Long-established neighbors living adjacent to the plant cannot open their windows or run their air conditioners without enduring the most horrific stench. Children playing in their yards do so with the noise of horses being sent to their deaths in the background. Landowners have difficulty securing loans to develop their property.
"I can assure you the economic development return to our community is negative," the mayor concluded. "The foreign-owned companies profit at our expense; it is time for them to go."
It is, indeed, time for them to go, and we applaud Utah Sens. Bennett and Orrin Hatch for casting their vote in favor of protecting American horses from such a fate. Now, we hope the conference committee will put American citizens and their horses above the palates of foreign gourmands and retain the horse slaughter ban in the final agriculture appropriations bill they send to the president.
---
Michael Markarian is executive vice president of The Humane Society of the United States.
