This is lengthy read but will be of serious interest to Wild Horse and Burro advocates, everywhere. For your convenience we have uploaded the document (HERE) so that you can print out a printer friendly version for offline review. Many thanks to Bonnie for compiling and sharing this information.
Last week while you weren’t looking Congress and the president did something the vast majority of Americans oppose. The president signed an omnibus-spending bill approved by Congress that makes it legal to slaughter horses in the United States once again. Polls show more than 70 percent of Americans oppose horse slaughter and few if any eat horse meat. Given the fact we are divided politically by a gap the size of the Grand Canyon, recognize that a 70 percent majority is an unheard of amount of backing.
“I get to sit back and sip on a Wrangler Iced Tea while my good friend and fellow equine advocate Vicki Tobin exposes even more of the propaganda and lies perpetuated by the horse slaughter cultist, Sue Wallis from Wyoming. Deception and perversion run amok in the camp of this half-baked nut case and her loose lips are about to sink her ship of horsemeat sooner than she may realize. (When you post to Facebook, you idiot, it is out there for the whole world to see, including your tainted backers and even they have had enough) Glug, Glug Sick-0 Sue, you are all washed up!” ~ R.T.
When it comes to the years that we have all been working to ensure that predatory horse slaughter stays out of the United States I rank way down on the food chain of the “Who’s Who in Equine Advocacy.” There are many more knowledgable and eloquent individuals such as Jerry Finch and John Holland, and many others, who carried the torch long before my eyes were opened and my heart-broken by the butchering of companion animals for the profit of foreign interests. But one thing that I do possess is a nose for business and, at the very least, the ability to know what makes a product profitable versus being a dog on the market and it does NOT take a PhD in economics to see that horse slaughter not only tanked in this country but it will never amount to anything, again.
“Sunday is the day that we like to give our readers something uplifting to read and to absorb. I must admit that after the events of the past week it has been pretty slim pickings here at Straight from the Horse’s Heart, but amongst all the bad news, a glimmer of hope as arose. One of our readers submitted a report, via a comment, that her 12 year old son wrote on the night the congressional committee decided to strip language from an appropriation bill, behind closed doors no less, and leaves open the potential option of preparatory horse slaughter returning to the United States. Although the content may not be uplifting (mom says there are a few errors but heck, he is 12) but the intent is pure gold. This school report breaths life into the future and hope that even young Americans “get it”. Hence the reason we fight on, for them, for their generation and for their future. We need to ensure that we leave for them a compassionate society, one that does not eat their friends and a country that revels in it’s symbol of western freedom, the wild horse. A special thanks, to the young contributor.” ~ R.T.
As near as anyone today can tell, America’s wild horse herds never came anwhere close to Manhattan before they were either slaughtered or confined to dusty rangelands out West. And it is hard to imagine a venue more different from those rangelands than brick-lined Vanderbilt Hall, at the New York University School of Law, where on a rainy Wednesday night a group of 50 or so wild horse enthusiasts met to discuss the past, present and future of the mustang, whom author Deanne Stillman calls “North America’s gift to the world.”
There is a bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that once rang loud and proud for the liberty of the United States of American; founded on truth, virtue and the wholesomeness of strong morals and pride. It is a symbol that all true, red-blooded Americans hold close to their hearts and stand solidly in support of. But this past week another bell rang; it was one that did not sing but instead gave out an off-tune “thunk” and sent shivers down the spine of every decent, tax paying citizen in the United States; it was the special interest’s bell of corruption and collusion and it thudded its funeral dirge in the offices of our Congress when a handful of politicians decided to add more funds to an appropriation bill while striping it of language that would protect American horses from being brutally slaughtered on their native soil for the profit of foreign interests; unconscionable.
Been dying for a thick, juicy horse burger but can’t find a meat market that sells the good stuff anymore? Did killjoy animal lovers thwart your plan to send a holiday gift box filled with flash-frozen tenderloins de Flicka to your Uncle Pierre in Bruges? Are herds of dadgum wild mustangs running through your neighborhood again, dropping horse pucky all over your croquet course?
Well, don’t you fret, Tex. Sharpen up the old meat hook and fire up the barbecue because horse slaughter is on its way back.
“While I ultimately supported this appropriations bill, I have serious objections with the conference committee’s decision to remove House-approved language preventing horse slaughter, language that had been in the bill for the past five years and I authored this year.”
Washington, D.C. – Last night, November 14, 2011, a Congressional Conference Committee tasked with reconciling differing House and Senate versions of the FY 2012 consolidated appropriations for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science and Transportation, issued a report failing to recommend de-funding of inspections of equines for slaughter for human consumption. This means for the first time since 2006, and in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, Americans would be required to subsidize a foreign owned industry that exports horsemeat served as a delicacy in fine restaurants in some European and other countries.
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