I arrived at the Sugarcreek Livestock Auction in Ohio at about 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 11: a Friday. Friday is when Sugarcreek hosts its weekly horse and tack sale. The auction is one of the major “kill auctions” east of the Mississippi River; many of the horses are purchased and shipped to a slaughterhouse, where their meat is then exported, for human consumption, to markets in Europe and Asia.
The other day I finally had the opportunity to watch War Horse and was lucky enough to do so with my wife and her parents; the resulting afterglow yielded ample rewards.
My in-laws were not horse people until Terry and I got hitched; not that I brought horses with me into the relationship but I did bring the means that allowed Terry to live her dream, and her parents were there, in Brazil, when she was given Apache the Mongalarga Marchador who now lives with us in Texas. My in-laws were hooked and always insist on taking care of the “GrandAnimals” when we travel. So the invitation for a movie and a dinner was quickly accepted with great relish. We attended a Monday afternoon matinee for not only the rock-bottom price of the tickets but because we knew that there would be few patrons present to distract us. And we were right, there were only 9 total, including us, but one felt that she was above the rules and not only left her cell phone on but answered it in the middle of the movie. I activated my death ray and vaporized her, immediately…in my mind.
OpEd by R.T. Fitch ~ Author/President of Wild Horse Freedom Federation The Children Bring Us Hope Of course, it’s Sunday and we like to stay away from the gross, grim and perverted (so normally we don’t talk about Mustang abuse and horse slaughter). But today I would like […]
HOUSTON, (Horseback) – The Chicago based Equine Welfare Alliance launched the most sophisticated assault yet against the return of equine slaughterhouses with a 90 screen breakout ad to be shown within 10 minutes of the opening credits of Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse.” The ad campaign will target three Washington politicians who pushed the cancellation of a prohibition against funding horse slaughter inspectors. The targeted ads will run in the districts and states of Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, Sen. Roy Blunt (R) Missouri, and Wisconsin Democrat Sen. Herb Kohl.
Our first attack on those who betrayed our horses has landed. It will leverage the movie War Horse.
We teamed up with Robin Hutton of the Sgt. Reckless Memorial Fund and today, the ad below will appear on 90 theater screens within 10 minutes of the start of the movie War Horse. The ad will be aired in selected theaters in the following states: North Eastern Georgia, Missouri, Wisconsin, Montana and Wyoming. Why those states, you ask? Very simple – Kingston, Blunt, Kohl, Baucus and Wallis! The ad will run for 30 days.
Steven Spielberg’s epic drama War Horse opened this week, banking on the raw cinematic power of horses to do what they do so well in their everyday lives: perform brute work for humans and get almost nothing for it.
In our last post we shared with you a letter from an astounding 14 year old young lady, Cheyenne Little, who is actually educated enough and adequately enlightened to the point that she “gets it” when it comes to the cruelty and inhumanity that is at the heart of bloody, predatory horse slaughter. I was both motivated and enthralled when I read what she had written as it was years beyond her time and several levels above the tripe that you get out of the public ramblings on the Horse-Eaters side, I had to pinch myself to remember that this was a fourteen year old speaking out, hats off to Cheyenne; we sure hope that there are a ton more of young folks like you out there as our fight is for you.
“In this day, people don’t have exposure, they don’t have interaction with horses. I hope this movie [War Horse] makes people appreciate the innate and natural intelligence of horses. And I also hope this movie brings an aware- ness to the plight of horses both after World War I and the plight today in a very sad turn of events in which the slaughtering of horses is being permitted for food as a renewed export industry, which makes us all very sad.”
– Steven Spielberg
As of late it has been a difficult ride for the horses of the United States of American, both domestic and wild. From the gaff of language being stripped from an Ag bill that defunded horse slaughter plant inspections and then signed by the President to the rapid, cruel and possibly unlawful trapping and removal of protected wild horses and burros from public lands by Obama’s BLM; things have been bleak and looked like they were heading south, until…enter stage left, Steven Spielberg with his latest epic film War Horse. If ever the American public needed to be informed on the plight of the American horse it is now and Mr. Spielberg just opened up that conversation on Christmas Day.
The first images from War Horse have been released in what promised to be a return to form for the ET and Jaws director Steven Spielberg. The First World War drama is based on a children’s book by Michael Morpurgo and was adapted as a hugely successful play by the National Theater in London in 2007.
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