All horse slaughter closed down in Mexico and Canada today

This has nothing to do with breeders and it has nothing to do with 'responsible decisions'. It has everything to do with property ownership and property rights. It has everything to do with the fact that a horse may have 10 or 20 different owners after it is bred. It is livestock and it is personal property. It is not your child and it is not something that anyone can be held responsible for 25 or 30 years after it has been raised and sold the first time.

A horse has value (or at least they used to have value) and that value is determined by the free enterprise / free market system. Good grief, we cannot MAKE people be humane and responsible for their own lives and those of their children. We cannot MAKE people stay from behind the wheel of a car when they are drunk or high. Heck, they drive drunk with their own children in their cars. Have laws stopped that?

Do you really think you can pass enough laws AND have them declared Constitutional that restrict property rights? Do you really think you can force someone to not die or lose their job or any other number of circumstances beyond anyone's control that causes an expensive, eating piece of property like a horse to NOT HAVE TO BE SOLD?

Get real people. Think with your head and not your hearts.

Meanwhile, give us your shipping address and we will send you the next truckload to feed forever that is turned down at the border.

For my part, I plan on thinking with my head after my head consults my heart. If Mia needed a $10K operation which only had a 50% chance of success, it would be a tough call for me. But if she went mildly lame and couldn't be ridden again but wasn't in pain, I'd get a long lead rope and we'd continue going out for walks together. And when her time comes, I'd shoot her with my own 357 before I'd ship her to Mexico for a few hundred dollars.

But the sad truth is that a lot of folks who own horses don't seem to like them much. Yet you cannot blame the breeders. I wasn't a rider in 2000, but I gather the market was pretty good then. A horse bred in a good market, a "wanted horse" with no trouble finding a buyer, is now only 12.

In fact, Mia was bred in 2000 & born in 2001. Sweepstake nominated purebred Arabian mare out of Gazarr:

"According to his owner, Gazarr has sired 9 National Champions, with grand-get that have been winning & several that are National Champions, then the great grand-get such as Esquire as a US TT winner along with many other great-grand-get doing as well!

Gazarr's daughter Revelrie (out of the Cross-U-Bar bred mare NA Nusiata & Esquire's grand-dam) not only was a Two time Scottsdale Top Ten Mare (1983 & 1986) She also was Region 1 Top 5 mare, a Halter Champion Mare & Jr. Champion filly. Revelrie's full brother, Revelation+ was a Canadian National finalist in 1983, a US National Finalist 1982, received his Legion of Honor, Region 1 Top 5 Stallion 1982, Region 4 Top 5 Stallion 1979, Pacific Slope Top 5 Stallion 1979 & 1982, English Pleasure Champion, Blue Western Pleasure with 19 Halter Championships.

Most likely Gazarr's most noted son, Zarr Hassan +/ (out of Belleza), was 1982 Canadian National Champion Stallion, 1982 US National Reserve Champion Stallion, US Top Ten Stallion 1980, 1982, 1983, Canadian Top 10 Stallion 1981 & 1982, Received his Legion of Supreme Honor, Region 1 Champion Stallion 1982, Region 2 Top 5 Stallion 1980, Pacific Slope Top 5 1980, and also had 17 Halter Championships."

I have no personal idea if that is good breeding, but it indicates she wasn't the backyard project of someone who wasn't paying attention to which horses were boys and which were girls...

Yet her current market value is nil. When I started walking her in the desert last November, it was obvious she didn't know to lift her feet over a small rock. She would snort and blow at a 6" gully. With help from a good trainer and a lot of work, she's getting better. We recently made some of our first solo trips into the desert, even if they were only 1/2 mile. Today we galloped about 1/3 of a mile up a trail. OK, I had been thinking a canter...we still have some times like that. But it only took about 100 yards to stop her, and afterward she trotted or walked as asked. So we went back to the beginning and tried again. OK, another gallop. She's still a work in progress...

So she's a spooky mare just beginning to learn to go alone on a trail. She despises kids and needs a confident rider - which I am not, although I try to fake it sometimes. But I couldn't market her as good for kids, or "husbands" (tho I be one), or beginners, or trail riding or cattle or...see the point? She is darn near worthless on today's market.

Not her fault, and not the fault of those who bred her. I'd bet in 2001, someone was hoping good things for her. It happens. She was given to a charity 4 years ago as a tax write-off, and I bought her on a whim. Had no idea what I was doing. Four years and a back injury later, we're finally getting to a point where I feel optimistic about our future. Four years, some pain and more work and training bills than I ever guessed later, and we're still just starting to do short solo rides.

She has been worth it to me, but the trainer who worked with her said a LOT of clients would have auctioned her off long ago. But that wasn't the breeder's fault. The breeding took place in 2000, and the breeder had no idea that 12 years later Mia would be a horse with no market value.

THAT is the challenge that drives the slaughterhouses. And with the price of hay and winter coming on and the economy, I'm afraid there are going to be a lot of horses who are better riding horses than Mia, but who will end up in dire straights.

See, again you want someone else to step in & clean up the mess. By the way, there are groups setting up rescue missions for those turned away at the border if it comes to that.
The borders aren't shut down so it would be easy for someone to feedlot the horses for a while then lie about where they came from.

I'm personally anti-slaughter but I don't legislate to have it shut down or kept open. I just won't ever use it as an out.

You're right, people can do what they want with their own animals but that doesn't include dropping them at my doorstep when they can't do what they want. A little off topic but I hope you'll see my point: I had a neighbor that was going to put his dog to sleep because it had urinary tract infection that he wasn't going to treat for whatever reason. I declined his offer to give it to me. He put the dog to sleep & later said it was my fault for not taking his dog. His dog, his responsibility, his choice.

There are tons of laws that restrict property rights.

Horses are livestock but because they aren't a usual food source like cattle, they aren't medically monitored like cattle. Heck, some horses even lose their registation papers as they move around. How many owners does a steer have in it's short life compared to most old horses?

This issue isn't about slaughter vs anti-slaughter. It's about people not wanting to eat tainted meat. Even if every State had a slaughter plant it wouldn't change that fact.

Remember Dipyrone? Do we want that to happen to medications we routinely give our horses?

I hate to break the news to you but many cattle get more medication and get many more vaccinations pumped into them before they are slaughtered than most horses do.

There are more calf-hood and breeding stock vaccinations than horses get -- 3 or 4 times more.
Here is a partial list for breeding cattle:
IBR -- Annual (killed or intranasal)
BVD -- Annual
PI3 -- Annual
BRSV -- Annual
Leptospirosis (5-Way) -- Annual (every 3 to 6 months in some areas)
Vibriosis -- Annual (30 to 60 days before breeding)
Trichomoniasis -- Annual (30 to 60 days before breeding)
E. Coli -- Vaccinate cows (twice 30 days before calving)
Pinkeye -- As needed
Blackleg 7-Way -- Annual
Anthrax -- Optional -- As directed
Anaplasmosis -- As directed

Here is the list for calves:

Blackleg 7-Way -- Preweaning
IBR-BVD-PI3 -- Preweaning
Leptospirosis -- Preweaning
Brucellosis -- Heifers (4 to12 months)
BRSV -- As needed
Pasteurella -- Preweaning
Haemophilus somnus -- Preweaning
Pinkeye -- As needed
Anthrax -- As directed
Anaplasmosis -- As needed

As for medications ---

Cattle, particularly calves being weaned and those going into feed-lots are given antibiotics to PREVENT diseases -- whether they need them or not.

Same cattle are fed medicated feed to prevent disease -- mainly respiratory infections.

Cattle that still get sick are given huge amounts of antibiotics. It is thought that most resistance to antibiotics we are now seeing in humans is because of all of the antibiotic residue we ingest in meat. Not only that, Vets regularly give Bute to cattle for pain and inflammation. When a cow does not get up after being down for too long calving, Bute is used for the treatment to help get her up. I went over to a neighbor's place a while back to give his downed cow a shot of Bute so the cow would not die. [He owed the Vet too much to call him out.] All of these older cows that are saved by Bute go to the sale as soon as the calf is weaned unless they lost the calf when they went down -- in which case go to the sale as soon as they are able to get around -- Bute and all. They are called 'cutters and canners', sell for $.50 to $.70 a pound and go into lunch meat, potted meat and hamburger. Cheers!!!

Probably the only horses that come close to getting the amount of medication in them are recently off-the-track race horses. Most neglected horses get no medication of any kind -- they are neglected.

But it is my understanding European countries don't buy our cattle for the same reason. I am all for having slaughter houses but.... I think we are a day late and a dollar short on this one. The EU doesn't want our horses because of drugs we give them and some of those drugs are never allowed to be given to a horse for human consumption. I hate to see where we are headed but opening slaughter up in the US will not IMO make any difference... we will not have anyone buying.

You didn't break any news to me. That's why the whole organic meat thing started.
We were discussng what other Countries don't want in their horsemeat over the horse's lifetime. How is that possible to regulate or prove?

I do wonder why this has happened now & so fast with no warning? They've been eating USA horsemeat for a long time. There is no mention of a study or anything showing it is bad.

This was well discussed in another area of the forum and horses raised for food have to have a passport stating it is raised for food and not allowed certain drugs. I would imagine they periodically test and probably fine hugely for infractions.

But here (USA) we don't raise horses only for food.
Every one of my horses would be dead right now if it weren't for drugs they received at some point in their lives.

Government in our horse's daily health care too?!

No I agree with you Natisha I am just stating facts. So our horses because they are not raised for food don't appeal the the market and they don't want them. I will give my horses what they need to stay healthy and happy. I don't plan on eating them not young or old. I was just stating the why :) And it wasn't all of a sudden but it was to go off the books in 2013 from what I understand so they needed to start enforcing it.

There has been a HUGE amount of warning leading up to this, the EU has been tightening up on the tainted meat issue for years.