Source: By Deanne Stillman as published in the Salon
Our fascinating history with the horse faces a jarring test: Will Congress ban horse meat, yea or neigh?
“Yup, I know, it’s ‘Feel Good Sunday’ but I am going to break the rules, a bit, and keep us on point with an ongoing issue. Sorry for hammering on reality on our allotted day off but I cannot let the fine words of our good friend and colleague, Deanne Stillman, go unheard. It is a great and important read. Keep the faith.” ~ R.T.
Gene Autry and Champion
A 2007 federal ban against equine slaughterhouses followed a nationwide outcry over the federal government’s roundup of some wild horses, which wound up on the killing floor. Such things had happened many times over, but this time, in a different age, the atrocities were under more intense scrutiny. The term “atrocities” is not hyperbole, as witnesses to what goes on in and around slaughterhouses have stated.
The ban lapsed in 2011. But ever since it was enacted, there were efforts to reopen “rendering plants” for horses, and in recent weeks, they seem to have finally succeeded. A bill to authorize slaughterhouses in Oklahoma is advancing quickly, and New Mexico is now trying to harvest what some view as an untapped cash crop. The states will need the USDA to once again agree to inspect the plants and their horsemeat, and reports suggest that the USDA is poised to do just that. The White House, meanwhile, has asked Congress to reinstate the ban, and some representatives are starting to speak up in support, as Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., did Friday.
But the horseflesh industry has been around since the advent of the train and car. By the end of the 19th century, the horse had outlived its usefulness — except for being money on the hoof. At the time, there were about two million mustangs running the range, as well as countless other horses across the country — carriage horses, plow horses, war horses and more. As I document in my book “Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West,” hundreds of thousands of wild horses were driven up the cattle trails right to the plants in Chicago, and they were then shipped to Europe in tin cans or to California as chicken feed for the thriving poultry industry. The railroad even had a special rate for such shipments.
One rendering plant in particular processed most of the horses, figuring prominently in the plundering of the West. This was the country’s first major equine slaughter operation, started in 1923 by the notoriously dapper Englishman P.M. Chappel and his brother, Earl. The Chappel Brothers Corporation, or CBC, rendered so much meat that it was known among cowboys as “the Corned Beef and Cabbage.” In its first year, as Walker D. Wyman reports in his seminal book “The Wild Horse of the West,” “about half the 1,446 horses processed under federal jurisdiction were canned, and it is certain most of them were wild.” The result was 149,906 pounds of meat from the Chappel plant alone; the total yield from the nearly 200 plants that were operating across the country that year was 22,932,265 pounds.
In 1925, Montana entered the market, signing a death warrant for “abandoned horses running at large upon the open range.” Over the next four years, about 400,000 mustangs were removed from the state. On June 5, 1929, a New York Times reporter filed a heated account of the round-ups, foreshadowing the mistaken reports that are published today, often restating such government canards as “wild horses must be removed because of drought conditions” even though no other wild animals are taken from the range for the same reasons and cattle continue to graze freely in great numbers.
“The first chapter has been written in the greatest wild horse roundup ever held in the West,” the Times reported, “and today hundreds of horses — large and small, vicious and indifferent, mustangs, ‘fuzz-tails’ and bronchos — are in pastures ready for the first sale and elimination check. The roundup will continue through most of the summer, with the hardest work still ahead, for the horses are retreating.”
During the decade that I worked on “Mustang,” I came across an obscure account of what it was like to work on the front lines of the horseflesh industry. Called “I Herded the Wild Ones,” it was written by Adolph C. Kreuter, a cowboy who toiled in the Chappel corrals, and it appeared in Frontier Times:
Ladies were demanding pony coats, in the manufacture of which the hair side was used much as the hide of unborn calf is used in some western apparel. Frequently as many as 500 to 700 horses daily were being sashayed up the ramp to the killing floor. I heard that this was very often done with great difficulty, due to the spooky natures of the condemned.
Buried in his article is the story of an anonymous cowboy who worked at the Chappel plant and couldn’t take it. After a series of failed attempts to destroy the plant, his efforts became more extreme. Once, he climbed a telegraph pole and cut the wires, sending off huge flares of flashing light — an SOS seen for miles. That did not end the slaughter, and he tried again, this time attempting to blow the place up, injuring himself in the act. He fled, and the following day some children playing in the grass near the slaughterhouse found him. He was arrested and charged with attempting to destroy the plant.
“I plead guilty,” he said. “I couldn’t help it. I am a cowboy, and I love horses. I can’t bear to think of people eating them.” Later, he reportedly went insane and then disappeared from the record. Chappel himself died in a freak accident — like others who have trafficked in the misery of horses, as some who have worked on the front lines of the fight for wild horses have told me, and as I have noticed myself over the years.
You could even include George Armstrong Custer in this observation. As we all know, he went down in an infamous “last stand” at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Eight years prior to that battle, on Thanksgiving night, he led the cavalry in the attack on Black Kettle and his band of Cheyennes along the Washita River. After Black Kettle and his tribe were wiped out, Custer ordered the decimation of the pony herd — all 800 of them, the mules as well. “We tried to rope them and cut their throats,” Lt. Godfrey recalled. “But the ponies were frantic at the approach of a white man, and the horses were frantic. My men were getting tired, and I called for reinforcements …”
“And so the rest were shot, and later,” as I recount in “Mustang,” “as the Cheyenne woman Moving Behind, 14 at the time, remembered, the wounded ponies passed near her hiding place, moaning loudly, just like human beings.” Today, the site of the Battle of the Washita is a national historic site…(CONTINUED)
PLEASE Click (HERE) to read the rest of this great story and to Comment
Deanne Stillman’s latest book is “Desert Reckoning: A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit, and the Biggest Manhunt in Modern California History,” based on an award-winning Rolling Stone piece. It was named a Southwest Book of the Year. For more, see www.deannestillman.com. More Deanne Stillman.
Related Articles
- Fresh allegations of wild horses going to slaughter (horsetalk.co.nz)
- Federal cuts to affect slaughter plant inspections (horsetalk.co.nz)
- Congressman Moran Statement on Reports of Horse Slaughter Plants Reopening (rtfitchauthor.com)
- Update: Citizen Investigation Exposes Evidence of Wild Horses Sold to Slaughter by BLM Contractor (rtfitchauthor.com)
- EWA/WHFF Houston Horse Meat Connection Gains Major Media Attention (rtfitchauthor.com)
- Professed Horse Eater Beats Slaughtered Horse with Computer Keyboard (rtfitchauthor.com)
- TS Radio: Equine Welfare Press Conference and Rally live coverage (ppjg.me)
- Could Horse Meat End Up on Your Dinner Table? (rtfitchauthor.com)
- Five Reasons Why Burger King’s Horse Meat Scandal Could Happen Here (rtfitchauthor.com)
- Advocates Concerned by Shipment of Horse Meat Through U.S. Ports (rtfitchauthor.com)
Categories: Horse News, Horse Slaughter, Wild Burros, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
Great article, as usual. We need a massive input of calls to Senator Mikulski’s committee on agriculture. This is where the rubber meets the road on the funding for USDA horse slaughter inspections. Seven Democrats and 5 republicans are on this committee, including Roy Blount, one of the evil three who put the language for inspections back in the Farm Bill. If it isn’t stopped here, it may not be stopped at all. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture is where to look.
LikeLike
I say spend your time on everyone but this scum who changed the wording out. Worthless loser. Not you Senator Blount
LikeLike
You have extensive knowledge, God is always hard and insistent person
LikeLike
God is always take care of the hard work and perseverance of the people
LikeLike
Anger Grief Despair and Disgust..why is it we never seem to really “spring forward” its always” fall back?” Can we never get enough of a “bad thing”?…Kudos to the unknown cowboy who couldn’t take it anymore and took “one step for mankind”
LikeLike
Note that he, too, paid a price.
Dealing with evil is very difficult. It is time that the government stepped to protect the interetest of the American people and recognize our values.
LikeLike
Another great article by Deanne. Should be put “out there” for more people who still have no idea of whats going on. So hard to read about the stallion who tried so hard to escape that horrible death.
But I’m sure there are many, many instances of that same thing happening. How could any so-called human being treat animals that way & LAUGH about it? Its way beyond my understanding.
It has to be stopped.
LikeLike
Some people are born without compassion, nor the ability to question or discern right from wrong. They just do what they are told. Humans suck!
LikeLike
Amazing and outstanding research and writing, Deanne. Thank you.
LikeLike
The question is—–Have we lost our Horse sense?—- A great article by Deanne and she like many of us remember those days when a good western, with a hero on a good horse is what we all rushed home to see after school, how many of us wanted to grow up to be a cowboy with a horse just like the ones in the shows even though we were mostly girls.. If like me – you all had a plastic Anne Oakley outfit and a set of cap guns, cowboy hat and boots. And lets not forget the stick horses (I had one in every color) we even stepped on pop cans so we could clippy clop when we rode our steeds on the street. Now most of us grew up and never got to experience the real thing – but we never lost our love of that great American Icon–the cowboy and his trusty horse. Sadly I lived all my adult life in a city type atmosphere and never really knew about the plight of horses until just the last few years ago when I came across R.T.s site. And was saddened and sickened by what our horse has been reduced to. Now I assume that many of us are the same age group and some have come late to this battle and many have been on the front lines a long time. I know that we all put what we can into this fight for the horse, and R.T. says it’s a fight for the voiceless–and he is so right. With this new travisty that is now coming down on us with horse slaughter now back on the table, we need to come together with newer ideas and plans, maybe more aggressive –I really don’t know what goes on out there, most organizations are all on there own, with there own aggendas–we will see what the year brings.
We do not have good westerns anymore with super hero cowboys who always do the right thing and great horses as their partners. Now most horses are reduced to cartoon depictions and little girls do not want to grow up to be cowboys. So my answer is NO we have not lost our horse sense. We just don’t teach it anymore. And I fear what will happen to the horse when this generation of little cowgirl wannabees is gone. All just my take on today.
LikeLike
how many of us wanted to grow up to be a cowboy with a horse just like the ones in the shows even though we were mostly girls..
Great post and so true! 🙂
LikeLike
Yep and Saturdays were the only day for TV…my friend flicka, sky king, spin and marty..it was stick horses until i got my first horse and then it was happy trails…with roy rogers the lone ranger, fury and the gang..I think that is why so many of our generation developed an affinity for horses and why Wild Horse Annie was able to mobilize so many children to save the wild horses..Kids used to play “Desert Dust” the real wild mustang from Adobe Town captured and on the cover of life magazine in the 50s
LikeLike
I used to watch National Velvet on Sunday night—seems like it was a series, not the movie, but I cannot be sure.
LikeLike
I missed the live BLM meeting – Is there any other way I can see & hear it?
The press conference was super. Only wish it were longer. Would really like to see
what actually went on at the BLM whoopdedoo.
LikeLike
They eventually post the video where the other meetings videos are at BLM under the Advisory Board meetings.
LikeLike
A rendering plant is not a slaughter house, is it? Rendering is done on the dead. Killing at rendering plants is a real bullet to the brain by someone who keeps the horse calm or at a residence for a horse that needs euthanasia. Rendering needs to be made available to horse people far and wide for the human euthanasia and removal when burial is not possible. They could literally take care of the less than 2% of the horses that are slaughter bound. Couldn’t a bill be attempted in a state to make rendering an alternative which would help create a better network for
crossing over our equine companions?
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Serenity's Musings.
LikeLike
I would not give up on the House Appropriations Committee. I know that there is distrust by some of the House, but remember that the House was the Chamber that included the language of the ban in the final passage of the their version of the ACT.
It was the Senate that did not include the language for banning money for horse meat inspectors that forced the Appropriations Bill into the Conference Committee. Although I know that there are some doubters, but in 2009 the House passed the ROAM Act and in 2012 the House passed the Corolla Wild Horse Protection Act, and though the bill has not worked its way through Congress, Representative Ed Whitfield got a hearing on Race Day Drug Use in Senate Committee by working with Senator Udall. This was a very effective hearing and informative about the types of drugs being used on horses.
I am not going to try to convince anyone about this other than just looking at where horse protection, particularly wild horse protection has failed. It has failed because members of the Senate are receiving funding from groups who benefit from the removal of wild horses and who traffic in horse meant as well as the by-products of horsse slaughter. The evidence is there. While I have attributed the most of the wild horse issue to Senator Reid, it is clear that since the Corolla Wild Horse Protection Act was introduced in the Senate the day after it passed in the House, and though Senator Reid may or may not have had anything to do with the entrance of Ducks Unlimited to the scene, there are clearly other factors at play here.
Not trying to stomp on anyone’s parade, but once you start following the money (which isn’t as easy as it sounds) there is cause for concern regarding whether we can on members in either House to step up. Personally, I am using these two issues as a sort of litmus test to see which party can get the most pro-wild horse anti-horse slaughter legislation PASSED.
We have had a lot of bills sponsored and co-sponsored by members of each party, but right now it looks to me like the Dems are slightly ahead in sponsored legislation, and ahead in co-sponsored legislation, but as for effectiveness, it is clearly a draw. In 2009, Rep. Nick Rahall (D) WV got ROAM through the House, and in 2012 Representative Walter Jones ( R ) North Carolina got the CWHP Act through the House and the House Subcommittee on Fisheries, Oceans and Insular Affairs gets kudos for taking FWS and expert witness head-on. Unless I missed something, and it is quite possible that I did, Congressman Whitfield and Senator Udall get a bipartisan split on the Amendment to the Horse Protection Act.
It is up to us to put the pressure on our Representatives and Senators. In terms of effectiveness, we had a pretty big learning curve starting out when the President appointed a wannabe Terminex Employee for the Secretary of Interior, but there are a lot of people who now have a history of actions and inactions for us to tally how we will.
Horses sometimes get short shrift because they are seen just as animals, and not appreciated for the value their represent to humans whether we one one or not. We all share in the ownership (guardianship) of our free-roaming wild horses and burros, and they belong to us. The land management agencies have repeatedly violated the public’s trust and their role in the stewardship of an animal that is, despite their refusal to accept peer reviewed, published science, a native, North American mammal that lived for 100’s of thousands of years in the wild before the first human domesticated one.
We must protect our horses; they are the harbingers—as much as a partner to us in their plight now as they have been when we relied on them for other purposes.
LikeLike
More information coming out of Canada.
http://www.hsi.org/world/canada/news/releases/2013/03/canada_horse_meat_prohibtion_030813.html
LikeLike
Thank you Deanne Stillman for understanding the wild horse saga on a personal basis and for sharing your story – we need more and more of this truth and like Wild Horse Annie did, it needs to be spread around to the American people who own these wild animals and this land. Thank you.
I was especially was interested in this sentence: “On June 5, 1929, a New York Times reporter filed a heated account of the round-ups, foreshadowing the mistaken reports that are published today, often restating such government canards as “wild horses must be removed because of drought conditions” even though no other wild animals are taken from the range for the same reasons and cattle continue to graze freely in great numbers.”
So … here we are 84 years later and it is the same baloney. As an “interested party” with most of the BLM offices with HMAs, I have gotten numerous BLM letters about their “drought management plans” … and although we know that nature works in cycles … the current precipitation per NOAA in Ely (mid Nevada) is 127% of normal.
BLM/USFS will stop at nothing to rid the wild horses and burros from their legal land … OUR land and OUR horses and burros. There are NO EXCESS wild horses and burros on their legally designated land.
LikeLike
The address I just left about information from Canada you can’t connect to it from the comment. You have to type it in yourself for it to come up. For some reason it connects to the sight but not the article.
LikeLike
Well I have SUPER feel good Sunday stuff to tell you! It warms my heart from the inside all the way out.
A couple of days ago a picture of a wild horse mare came across my iPad screen. A beautiful buckskin 9 yrs old. An absolute cutie.
I immediately called Palomino because I knew she had a much wider net than I do. After a couple of nerve racking days she left yesterday for a rescue. Today I was told she went to Dreamcatcher’s. She is gonna live on a big ranch with lots of other wild horses who will remind her of those things she’s forgotten. She has several thousands acres to go wander.
Yesterday I named her Momma because yesterday was my mom’s birthday.
This is my first time I ever was a part of networking this early. Usually by the time I see things everything but the shouting’s over. I made the first call and TONS of people took over after that.
My heart is full tonight. And I know my part was small in the big sceam of things. So many others stepped in to take over.
Tonight Momma is safe. She is acclimating to her new ranch. Other horses are no doubt awaiting their new herd mate. Not sure it could get any better than this.
Momma I hope you have a long very happy life at Dreamcatcher’s.
LikeLike
Please make phone calls to Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Agriculture. Call all of them.
LikeLike
Good article, thanks for sharing, R.T. I’m afraid the only way to truly save our horses, wild or domestic, & all the other creatures on this beautiful planet, will be when humans become extinct! We, & we alone, are the cause of all problems, & the cause of all suffering. If only we would stop & listen, we could learn so much from our animal friends, but most humans choose to silence them, so they won’t have to listen & learn. When they’re all gone, & silenced forever, what then? I don’t want to be here if that time ever happens! I am so glad, grateful, & forever thankful that there are some, like all of us, who do still care, & will, until our last breath, continue our fights to save & protect these God given creatures!
LikeLike
Just checking back on my older emails comments – apparently missed all the ones about “back in the old days” when we were kids. I was another horse crazy kid – sky king, fury, lone ranger, roy rogers – all the oldies but goodies. But I was lucky my folks finally gave in when I was 15 – had a little bay mare for 5 great years – even got a colt from her. Had a wonderful time. But the 14 years before read everything I could find that had the word horse in it! Like all of us.
LikeLike