Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm in the market for another horse at the present moment. Having said that, I'm seeing alot of ads for older horses. #1-The market for horses has gone down dramatically due to prices and shortage of feed #2-It is illegal to free unwanted horses onto public land. So lets see, Joe Schmow down the road has 5 horses and can realistically only feed 2. He doesn't want to break the law by turning any loose, so he cuts the feed down on all 5. Instead of having 3 he can't afford to feed, he resorts to starving all 5. Or how about the horse rescue agencies who have numerous older, broke down injured "companion" horses to adopt out? With the price of hay and the outlook of this years hay prices, the market for "companion" animals just isn't there. I see ads from rescue agencies asking for help and donations from the public to help out. Sorry Charlie, I have food for my animals and not much extra. Without the horse slaughter bill imagine how many unwanted horses are going to end up at rescue agencies with the agencies asking for public help. My horses and mules are family and I love them dearly. When the time comes for me to have the make the decision to humanely put them down, I do it with heavy heart. My animals carry my happy butt hunting and carry my elk down for me. They take me on rides in the summer into the hills and come in handy during horn hunting season. They love on my kids and teach them responsibility. While I would never want any of my critters in the slaughterhouse, I see the need.
[quote=Redraven;8064868]It may not be our MODERN culture, but historicly it most assuredly WAS quite common. The American Indians slaughtered and ate horses. The early settlers did, too, when necessary.
quote]
Factory farming however, with raising animals for slaughter in dirty conditions and then transporting them to slaughter houses (I am leaving a lot out) was not in practice until recently.
The slaughter industry took a note from the Ford model.
While animal "rights" is a confusing issue for some...the basic idea of animal "welfare" should not be as hard to consider and understand.
Yes, on a personal note I disagree with the treatment of chickens, pigs etc.
However, the very fact that American can turn it's back on the horse - a symbol of the West, a representative of our land - is scary.
If you wish a historical prospective on the use of horsemeat in Montana, read the chronicles of Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery.
Horsemeat was often all they had, (or dog). Many times they were starving and in some cases actually bought horses from the Indians for the sole purpose of food.
Europe developed a taste for horse after all the wars when the only meat available was horsemeat, usually calvery stock killed in battle.
If a facility is set up and maintained to Federal Standards, Inspected by licensed professionals, the animals are treated humanely prior to slaughter, what is the big deal?
My family has raised horses for over a century in Montana. Yes we have an emotional attachment to them, but bottom line is they are animals, not humans.
They make great pets, can do a lot of work, but when they are broken down, injured, sick, you have 2 choices. Sell them as canners, or kill them yourself and bury them which is a task if you don't have a large tractor w/a farmhand or a backhoe.
After a horse gets so old, their teeth wear down to the point they slowly starve as they can't grind their feed properly. Is a quick death in a processing facility worse than a lingering death from starvation???
Emotion aside, (especially the "environmental impact" garbage), this is something that makes sense, Period.
If a facility is set up and maintained to Federal Standards, Inspected by licensed professionals, the animals are treated humanely prior to slaughter, what is the big deal?
That's really the crux of the issue in my opinion. For everyone who opposes a maintained and inspected facility - be it by USDA or by the state or by whomever - I invite you to cross the border to our south. I invite you to see what happens to the horses that folks from my area can no longer ship anywhere within the US for a humane death. It is beyond description what takes place.
The fact that we - as a nation - can afford to turn up our noses at horse meat is due to (or perhaps defined by) the fact that we, as a nation, are a "rich" country. Meat is meat. It's only the wealthy countries that can afford the luxury of labeling certain types of animals as "dinner" while others are crossed-off the list. Put it like this: if someone approached you offering you some freshly killed large rodent as the basis for your dinner, you'd blanch at the thought. For millions out there, it's merely affordable protein.
A very good friend of mine is French. Her father was a butcher. She was a horse-mad young girl. She ate horse her whole life. As she said, "It iz not my horse."
This all reminds me of something that took place in the UK with the sole remaining guinea pig farm (raised solely for the purpose of being sold to labs). A well regulated, inspected facility with the animals kept in sanitary and humane conditions. The animal rights folks exhumed the body of the dead grandmother and held her for ransom. (You can look it up, this did happen.) The price? Closure of the operation - shut down and we'll give you Granny's body back. The owners caved in and shut the place - which had been in the family for years and years. Now... now the labs are sending to the Indian sub-continent or Asia for guinea pigs; bred and kept in who-knows-what conditions, but certainly unregulated conditions. How this translates as a "victory"... no one has ever been able to adequately explain to me.
I posted this a couple weeks back and didn't want to type it all so here it is copy and pasted:
I grew up on a Ranch in NM and now live in Amarillo Texas. I have been to several horse sells over the past couple of years and is it just pathetic at what's bein pushed through the ring. Horses that are 15 + years old that have had thier teeth floated beyond repair are being pushed from ring to ring because they can't sell. When the owner finally has had it, they take it out to the pasture and put it down themselves. It's a shame that that's what it comes down to! You can't create retirement homes for old animals ladies and gentleman because once the animals teeth have worn down and they can no longer chew up food, they die of starvation... I also want to inform you darn tree huggers that mutliple "nursing homes" that PETA set up for these horse were shut down because there is nothing you can do for a horse that has no teeth! you can force a tube down it's throat and feed it 35-40 lbs of nutritional supplement a day but then you have major side affects (tearing of the esophogus, extreme dehydration, malnutrion, twisted gut etc). If people werent around these horses would become easy prey for predators such as mountain lions, bears, a pack of coyotes etc. It's called survival of the fittest... and the most humane thing that humans can do at this point is to re-establish those FDA regulated slaughter houses, and not just one in Montana, we need them in every state.
I am sick of people posting this PETA crud. If you've honestly been around horses your whole life then you know how crappy it is to watch a horse die from starvation because it can't eat. Not to mention watching a house flounder around because it has a broke hip that can't be fixed. Let's remove humans and humane treatment from the equation for just a second... If humans weren't around these sick/malnurished/injured hourses would be prey for another animal higher on the food chain... its a way of life! Now that we (humans) have stepped in the picture we want to baby every subject on the planet and "save" everything... looks to me like we are only messing things up. Now ranchers that are barely scraping by to put food on everyone elses table have to ration thier meals because they have to pay for medical bills and feed these injured animals for the rest of it's natural life. Peta says they are for animals, but they are against americans... all the way through. When it costs more to maintain a ranch it cost more $ per # for the food on your table... the american family is paying dearly for this ban, and it's about time someone gets a brain in thier head and overturns it.
Horses are livestock. People have made them pets. Horses started out as work animals. Again, people have made them pets. I LOVE my horses and have sadly had to send greatly injured horses to slaughter in the past... be it a broodmare, stallion or colt. We do not have the option here to bury them (and it's against the law in a lot of places). If we have them euthanized, what do they do with those bodies? That's called pollution - these animals have drugs in their system. Drugs that killed them - drugs that would definitely kill humans. Never mind the drugs to keep them from getting diseased. Those are called preventative medicines. What do you think you're eating in most beef? Preventative medicines! Horses in our part of the country (and we're no where near Montana) are being abandoned, slipped in with other horses out in pastures, being loaded in your trailer at horse auctions (we have taken to locking our trailer while at horse events!)... anything to get rid of them. We are seeing more and more of these poor horses starving and believe you me... these horses are not getting their preventative medicines...widespread disease could pop up (and NAIS is not the answer either). There are not enough rescue homes available to take care of this widespread problem. The economy is making it even worse right now. There is no where else to get rid them! If they go through an auction and end up at a slaughter house so be it! Obviously no one wants them! I'm sorry to say it's time for them to be put down.
Likewise, I shall mostly paste my old thoughts -- this subject is too important to let it go by, and what I have to say hasn't changed, tho I'm adding some links and some minor new thoughts.
Regardless of how much people love their horses, there are STILL about 100,000 old, crippled, sick, and rank (untrainable/dangerous) horses that need to be put down every year, and there's no way around that. That's 800,000 POUNDS of dead horse that you'll have whether they're slaughtered or just euthanized. Would you rather it went into the landfills?? or that it was used as it would be in nature, as food for a carnivore? (Most slaughtered horses went to feed zoo animals, which now are living on imported meat instead. How did that benefit anyone, other than some overseas middleman?)
Remember -- THESE ARE NOT USEFUL OR HEALTHY HORSES. They are NOT pets, and they are not Bambi. Some of them are deadly dangerous to anyone who tries to handle them.
Ending horse slaughter made the end of a horse's life so expensive that now average people can't afford to keep a horse. When they bought that horse 25 years ago, they didn't expect that it would cost them $1500 or so to euthanize it and dispose of the corpse, but that is how much it costs in the more populous states, and even in Idaho it cost my friend $500 to kill and bury her beloved old horse that finally got too decrepit (and old horses are frequently miserable; it's no kindness to extend their lives). I've been told it's about $500 or so in MT as well. Give it another 10 years, and people who bought their horses long ago (when slaughter was still available) will be faced with a euthanasia/corpse-disposal bill in the $5000 range, which they had no way to predict when they bought that horse.
Ending horse slaughter meant that suddenly those going-to-die-no-matter-what horses were a liability, with NO value, instead of having some small value as meat. And that meant people who couldn't just cough up that much of an unexpected disposal bill, wound up desperate to get rid of them, and started giving them away. Which in turn meant that you can no longer sell a grade horse -- without slaughter keeping SOME value attached to unusable horses, grade horses and ordinary saddle horses are now worthless, because their end-of-life liability is more than their market value.
So the end result of no more horse slaughter is that ALL horses (other than the relative few specialty animals such as dressage and racehorses) LOST VALUE, and a lot of old horses are miserably tottering along or starving (having outlived their teeth), that in the past would have been humanely killed at the slaughterhouse.
Hey, don't believe me. Go ask anyone whose life and livelihood have been horses. Ask any professional horse trainer. Ask any stable or barn manager. Most will tell you the same thing. Ending horse slaughter DAMAGED horses, it didn't help them at all.
And if you think every old horse can be a pet or that every rank/untrainable horse should be "rescued" -- it's just a matter of time before one of those rank horses I mentioned KILLS someone who had no idea just how violent a 1000 pound animal can get, and who foolishly believes that EVERY horse can be made into a safe ride. What if the victim is YOUR kid??
See those buckin' horses at the rodeo? That's where some of the rank horses wind up. Of course if PETA and HSUS have their way, there'll be no more rodeos either, and one less place for unsafe and unrideable horses to go.
The animal rights strategy, which most people in MT don't understand yet, is to make animal ownership so expensive and/or so legally onerous, that no one can or dares own animals. The AR types DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE ANIMALS, and they prove this over and over (visit PETA Kills Animals for a well-documented and all-too-typical example). Their REAL goal is to take away YOUR right to own animals at all.
The fact that ending horse slaughter led directly to a lot of starving and abandoned horses (which had previously been humanely slaughtered) doesn't concern the ARs who pushed through that policy in the least. In the AR view, the end justifies the means.
Animal rightists don't love animals; they hate people.
The animal rightists (principally as PETA and HSUS) do not care who (human or animal) suffers for it, so long as they advance toward their goal of NO ANIMAL USE OR OWNERSHIP.
========
As to the notion that there's so much money in slaughter horses that they're being raised for the purpose, that's utter nonsense. A well-fleshed horse was worth about $400 at the slaughter auction (tho costs 10x that much to raise to that point), while canners (ie. dog food) might be worth as little as $100. Until the bottom got jerked out of the market, any rideable nag was worth $1200 or so. Which is why horse trainers were always on the lookout for an overlooked prospect at the slaughter sale -- there was a LOT more money in a trained horse than in a carcass.
Now, without slaughter, old and average horses are worth nothing -- can't sell 'em, can't give 'em away. How was that progress?
It's obviously been too long since you've watched Disney... Bambi is a fawn, not a foal.
Haha... the problem is that the nonfarming public increasingly thinks ALL ranch critters are some incarnation of Bambi, which unfortunately lets the ARs jump right in with their "you wouldn't kill Bambi, would you?" arguments.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Horses are livestock.
