Horse Slaughter Is Back In The U.S.

It is letters by the ton that change legislation. Have a campaign whereby there will be one big mail in day. State that you want a law enacted to make microchip scanning mandatory at auctions and slaughter plants. BTW, when valuable horses are stolen and then supposedly butchered for meat, there just might be a big insurance policy covering this horse and we don't know if it's career might have ended ie a theft of convenience. Happens all the time.

You really wouldnt need a law passed. Any slaughter house that opens will need a business licenses. During the application process it is easy to "Ask" a business to do something as part of the aproval process. Usually businesses are happy to oblige something like that that is simple and cheap. When this process takes place horse owners will be way better served asking for mandatory scanning and owner notification, than screaming and crying about how bad it is to slaughter horses.
Remember there is and never has been a US ban on raising and slaughtering horses for food. This is a myth that has been perpetuated by uninformed people.
There was a budget cut at the USDA, Since no one in the US was eating horse meat the argument was made why are US taxpayers paying for horse meat inspections ? The funding for the inspections simply stopped. The industry could have paid for inspectors and passed the costs on to consumers, but there simply wasnt a market. Slaughter houses went to mexico for the same reason Wirlpool, Hershey, and others went to mexico. NAFTA made it easy, and cheap labor, no oversight, and no environmental laws. I will be extremely surprised if a plant opens here. Why pay US wages, and deal with US laws when you can do it in mexico ? I guess time may prove me wrong, but I don't think much will change.

I don't think you're as correct in your asumptions as you could be Joe. The slaughter facilities offered to pay for the inspectors in full but the government still wouldn't allow it because of pressure from animal rights groups and well intentioned but ill informed citizens.

With horse prices as low as they are I think there is going to be a scramble to see where the first plant can get started. They may not last a long time but I bet they pop up in several regions and stay open for at least a few years. There's too much money to be made. I think it will help the horse industry by setting a bottom price and offering an outlet for unusable horses. As far as the stolen horse issue, you are much better off to freeze brand your horse with a registered brand than to rely on someone finding a microchip that tends to migrate in unpredictable ways.

While I agree on the freeze branding, at least you can see it from a distance. And the current system makes microchipping pretty worthless. The funding for inspectors was cut in 2006, yet the slaughter houses kept operating for at least another year. I think there is more to the issue. Like I said if a bunch of US houses open up I'll be proven wrong. I think the horse slaughter stands to make more money in Mexico, cheap labor, noone testing for Bute, little to no oversight or environmental laws, only time will tell.

I live in Ontario Canada and I am not aware of any slaughter houses open here although there may be that I am not aware of. I know that our local Supermarket tried to sell horse meat over the counter a couple of years ago because there are so many Europeons immigrating to Canada and while the people from the Netherlands loved that it was being sold the locals were so outraged they refused to shop there so long as it was being sold so they took it off the shelf.

Personally I believe slaughter does have its place and while I personally would love to see every horse have a wonderful home it just isnt realistic. I also believe so long as there are black market dealers stealing horses as has happened alot in US the horses that do have safe and secure homes are put at risk. Not a good thing. Allowing slaughter with guidelines, laws and inspection is the only way to ensure that things are done humanely and locally at least.
We don't live in a perfect world, there will always be people who bite off more than they chew when buying a horse, or any animal for that matter. So long as we have people in the world who fail to recognize how much time, energy, and money goes along with ownership, there will be horses slated for the sale barns, and yes the slaughter houses.
I personally would never eat horse meat..unless I was facing starvation. I personally admire and respect them too much to make a meal of them. Some day perhaps I will have no choice but for now no thanks.

Ohh thank you for the info LadyTrails. I am sorry if I have opened a new thread about this, I figured there had to be one but I scrolled through a few pages and couldn't find one. Hearing everyone's opinions, I guess having slaughterhouses in the US is better than a horrible trip to be killed in Mexico... :/

The stealing would only stop if some meat was sold in the U.S., which it wasn't before.

Does anyone have any statistics (which is not the plural of anecdote) on horse theft in the U.S.? I would bet it's very small and when it does happen the last thing those thieves want is a brand inspector looking at the animal which will happen %100 of the time at an auction or slaughterhouse. You're much more likely to find a stolen animal being sold in the classified ads of a newspaper than you are at an auction. Besides the horse market will have to improve a lot before thier worth enough to steal!

I have wondered about that myself, With the advent of the internet and instant nation wide networks like this one. Just like most crime we hear about instantly and it gives the false impression that it is more widespread than it is. I have seen several cases though and many leave me scratching my head. I have seen some stolen horses that really are only worth about 500 on a good day. Nice loved animals but not going to fetch a ton of money. Seems like a whole bunch of work to get a truck, trailer, stake out area, get horse loaded, take a couple states away, pay for the gas, all for a few hundred bucks. I just don't see it. Seems like horses good enough to fetch a bunch of money would be known enough to be identified.

If people are already stealing horses in Florida to illegally slaughter them now, would it not be logical to assume that they will steal them more often if there is a quick, easy place to take them such as a legal slaughter plant?