Special to The Legal Animal. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act needs your immediate support.
Warning: This article contains graphic and disturbing material. Photo: Cambria, a Mustang saved by Lifesavers rescue from a possible trip to the slaughterhouse. For many horses, the road to the slaughterhouse starts at the auction yard
Spent racehorses, wild Mustangs, and unwanted “by-products” of the
Premarin industry. Horses who are sick, lame, malnourished, elderly, or simply poorly trained. Family pets who have served humans with dedication all their lives, but are now thrown away because they are no longer useful.
The horses come from all walks of life, but the common denominator is that they are all terrified – and their fate is at the mercy of the highest bidder.
Unfortunately, mercy is often in short supply.
For those horses not lucky enough to be purchased by a private buyer – or if they are luckier still, a responsible horse rescue – their future often rests in the hands of “killer” buyers, who win the right to their flesh for a few hundred dollars.
“Their whole life just changed in a flash. All of a sudden they weren’t someone’s beloved pet any more, they became this commodity, this thing worth a few bucks,”
says Jill Starr, founder of
Lifesavers, a Mustang rescue in Lancaster, California.
Starr used to frequent the horse auctions, looking for Mustangs who she might be able to save from “the killer buyer.” She wrote about these experiences in
A Day at the Auction Since she began in 1997, Starr has rescued 410 horses. Today, her sanctuary is overflowing with 150 horses, and she no longer needs to go to auctions to look for horses to rescue – they come to her in all too great a number.
However, she will never forget her experiences choosing horses at the auction yard – and looking into the eyes of those she couldn’t save.
“There are a lot of tears,” she says. “I have learned over the years that you have to think of the ones in your trailer, the ones you have saved and given life to, because if you dwell on those you couldn’t save, you would just have to dig a hole and put your head in the ground.”
Starr describes the fear of the horses who are shoved into the chaotic atmosphere of the auction yard, often abandoned their by owners who are hoping to make a quick buck from their disposal.
“From the time they reach the auction, these horses are exposed to all sorts of nasty things – other horses, stress, panic, slippery floors, high-energy levels. They get shoved around and basically treated like cattle,” she says. “These horses’ eyes are bulging out of their heads, it is very scary for them. . .but [the handlers] really don’t think of them as living, feeling beings.”
Knowing that a rideable horse is likely to fetch more money, workers at the auction house often try to jump on the horses and make them perform for the crowd – even if the horses are sick or lame and shouldn’t be ridden.
“It is all very frightening and confusing, so obviously the horses don’t perform their best if they are riding horses. But [the handlers] will ride them if they can – you see big people on little horses, people riding horses that shouldn’t be gotten on, trying to force them into a circle,” Starr says.
In just a few minutes of bidding in the auction ring, a horse’s fate is decided. If no one is willing to bid above the “meat price” of about 35 cents a pound, the horse usually goes to the “kill pen” to await transport to the slaughterhouse.
In California, a ballot initiative passed in 1998 prevents the direct sale of horses to slaughter, so the horses there go a more circuitous route, passing to new ownership in a different state before going to their death.
In other states, the road to the slaughterhouse is also lengthy, since there are only three horse slaughterhouses in the United States – two in Texas, and one in Illinois.
Although veterinarians usually recommend that horses be taken off trailers every few hours for food and water during transport, the United States Department of Agriculture regulations allow horses to be shipped for 28 hours straight without rest, food, or water.
So, after languishing for days in the holding pens at the auction house, horses are often crammed onto stock trailers for another long chapter in their journey of terror.
Since every pound of horseflesh is worth money, brokers crowd as many horses as possible into a load – often using double-decker trucks designed for cattle and pigs, which prevent the horses from even holding their heads in a normal position.
The combination of slippery surfaces and frightened horses mean animals are often trampled and injured en route, and must lie injured or dying until they reach their destination. As “flight animals,” experts say horses suffer much more in the intensive confinement of transport than do similarly transported cows and pigs.
Then the horses reach their final stop.
Very few unbiased observers have ever seen the operations of a slaughterhouse, as the slaughterhouses refuse to open their doors to activists or the press. Therefore, most of what humane advocates know about what goes on inside the slaughterhouse has come from undercover video of the agonizing and terrifying process.
The animals are forced into a narrow chute where they can’t turn around, and have no choice but to march slowly toward their deaths, their fear increasing as the sounds, smells, and sight of death surrounds them. When they reach the end of the line, they are shot by a captive-bolt gun, which often requires several attempts to kill them or render them senseless, sometimes not completely doing the job before the rest of the slaughter commences.
What a brutal end for such a noble creature.
Starr summarizes it this way: “I’ve heard people call horse slaughter a necessary evil. I say ‘no,’ it is just evil.”
Last year, more than 90,000 horses in the United States experienced a fate similar to the one described above. Such practices can be stopped once and for all with passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.
This legislation could come up for a vote soon before the U.S. House of Representatives. Please act now to help ensure its passage.
Check here to see if your Congressional representative is a cosponsor of the bill. If so, please contact your representative’s office, thank them for their support, and urge them to do everything they can to push the legislation. If not, please contact your representative’s office by phone, email, or fax and urge them to support the bill. You can find information about how to contact your representative at Congress.org , or see the Society for Animal Protective Legislation for more information on how to support the ban. To read more about this legislation and the effort to ban horse slaughter, see related story here.