Lead them to pasture, not to slaughterhouse

Stories such as this appear too frequently if they appear at all.

The New York Times reported recently on a horse slaughter auction that takes place regularly in Shipshewana, Ind. It is hardly the only such “killer buyer” auction in the country (meaning most of the horses are sold per pound to buyers who slaughter them for meat.) There is at least one I know of in Maryland where I have a 40-acre horse farm. A friend who lives in Fallon, Nev., says there’s one in her town.

Luckily not all the horses at this Indiana auction went for slaughter. A few compassionate and a few more parsimonious humans showed up and bought some either to save their lives and keep them as pets (the compassionate ones) or to work in various disciplines (the parsimonious ones) as horses sold at these auctions go for a pittance.

Painting a picture

The Times story began: “At the weekly horse auction here, No. 274, a handsome chestnut-colored draft horse, looked at the surrounding men while being led into a small ring. Two of the men looked back, calculating how much meat the animal’s carcass would yield, and started bidding accordingly.”

Ah, how divine the retribution would be if humans could undergo at least a sampling of the terror, the mistreatment, the violence, the starvation and the inhumanity they so willingly visit on some poor animals.

The reason the Shipshewana auction is newsworthy is that it sets the backdrop for a heated debate over whether horse slaughter should be banned nationwide in the United States as it was recently by courts in the two states where it took place — Texas and Illinois. The horse slaughter industry says the banning of horse slaughter in the United States only visits increased cruelty (as if they of all people gave a whit about animal cruelty) on these noble creatures. Industry representatives argue that in addition to being killed, horses bound for slaughter are now trucked hundreds or thousands of miles in cramped, dangerous conditions, devoid of food or water, to meet their ends in Canada or Mexico.

The pro-slaughter crowd claims the near-ban on domestic slaughter is making it worse for these horses, not better. Yes, it does make it worse for many of the horses still bound for slaughter. But that ignores the main effect of the slaughter ban. The resulting drop in domestic slaughterhouses has caused a concurrent drop in the number of horses slaughtered overall in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Notes the Times, “Indeed, even with the busy export to Canada and Mexico, the Agriculture Department estimates that 105,000 American horses were slaughtered in the three countries in 2007, down from some 138,000 the year before.”

Laws needed

I’ll even go so far as to agree with the pro-slaughter crowd on this point: horse slaughter should not be banned in the United States — not without more laws, that is. We should ban it nationwide but couple that ban with other laws that protect horses from being used up and spat out by greedy owners and breeders.

There wouldn’t be a horse slaughter trade in the United States if horses were not so seriously over-bred in the first place. Perhaps in addition to a horse slaughter ban, Congress should pass a bill taxing professional and back yard horse breeders. The proceeds of that tax could be used to maintain old, infirm and even very young horses that owners toss off as detritus.

As the Times notes, the horses at these auctions, “may once have carried children on their backs, pulled wagons on a farm, even been to the races. Now they are lame, aged, fractious or unwanted for any of various other reasons. Some are young, never broken in to begin with.”

Horses give their all to owners who all too often dump them when they no longer serve their owners’ purposes. People like that don’t deserve the privilege of horse ownership.

X Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service.