Burger King drops firm which supplied horse meat

[freshwest]

36. Agreed on the RX. I mentioned the fifties. But horse slaughter will resume in the USA:

Obama, Congress restore horse-slaughter industry

...The domestic ban didn’t end horse slaughter but instead shifted the site of butchery to Mexico and Canada - which meant increased abuse or neglect as the horses were shipped out of the country and beyond the reach of U.S. law...

All sides agreed that the backdoor ban was a failure. A June report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ chief investigative branch, said the ban depressed prices for horses in the U.S. and led to a surge in reports of neglect or abuse as owners of older horses had no way of disposing of them, short of selling them to “foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply...”

The move got a tepid stamp of approval from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which said it had always been worried about the way Congress went about its initial ban. PETA said it predicted that horses would be shipped to foreign slaughterhouses...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/30/obama-congress-restore-us-horse-slaughter-industry/?page=all

Despite the moves by T. Boone Pickins and others to stop American horse slaughtering in the last decade, the reasons for resumption was reconsidering in line of these findings:

Transportation of horses for slaughter

The Department of Transportation has officers at the enforcement points to ensure proper transportation of horses, but has no jurisdiction beyond transportation matters. Horses that are severely lame or disabled are not accepted at the plants. In 2008, Animals' Angels received over 900 pages of documents and photographs from the United States Department of Agriculture taken during part of 2005 at the Beltex horse slaughter plant in Texas. The document revealed an appalling number of incidences and an equally appalling degree of suffering sustained by horses, including hundreds of photographs that graphically depict horses with open fractures, legs missing, battered and bloody faces, eyeballs dangling and what appears to be horses left to bleed to death.[46]

A 1998 survey commissioned by the USDA/APHIS to determine where welfare problems occur during horse transport to slaughter found severe welfare problems in 7.7% of the transported horses, with a majority from conditions caused by owner neglect or abuse rather than transportation. The report recommended fining individuals who transport horses unfit for travel.[12] However, despite those recommendations, in an April 2011 Report on Equine transport violations, of 458 violators and 280 cases reported since February 1, 2002, only 51 of these 458 violators have received fines. Total fines assessed were $781,350.00. The highest fines imposed were $230,000.00 (Charles Carter, CO), $162,000.00 (Leroy Baker, OH) and $77,825.00 (Bill Richardson, TX) It is unknown at this point how much of these assessed fines actually has been paid. Violators continue to operate business as usual.

The abuse horses suffer throughout the slaughter pipeline, from feedlot to auction to transport to the kill process itself has been widely documented by Animals Angels in this 30-page report. Findings included dangerously overcrowded pens, aggressive, rough handling, equine suffering that is observed and tolerated, transport with no rest, no water and no food for 28 hours by law, for longer by actual practice, no food, water, shelter for extended periods - at auction, during transport, at feedlots and export pens, transport in double decked trailers between auctions and feedlots only tall enough for cattle, and injuries untreated.

On February 22, 2007, Rep. Robert Molaro introduced a bill, HB1711, to the Illinois General Assembly to prohibit the transportation of horses into the State for the sole purpose of slaughter for human consumption.

There are US Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations governing the transportation of horses,[47] but the USDA has said it does not have the resources to enforce the regulation.[48] In 2009, a bill which would have prohibited interstate transport of live horses in double-deck horse trailers passed out of committee in the House of Representatives and placed on the Union Calendar.[48] The bill died at the end of the 111th United States Congress.

On July 9, 2011 Sen Mary Landrieu, (D - LA) and co-sponsor Sen Lindsey graham (R-SC) has introduced Senate Bill S.1176 The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 to amend the Horse Protection Act (15 U.S.C. ch.44) to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption.[49]

On November 18, 2011, the ban on the slaughter of horses for meat was lifted as part of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2012.[50]
[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_slaughter#Transportation_of_horses_for_slaughter

The last paragraph there refers to the bill signed by Obama because of the hideous abuses these animals suffer. The Wiki entry is full of horrible practices and figures, and the various groups opposing and supporting slaughtering horses. And horse slaughtering plants are planned right now, with foreign investors:

In March 2012 Wyoming state Representative Sue Wallis proposed building a new horse meat processing plant in Missouri or Arkansas. She claimed to have $6 million to invest and support by Belgian horse meat buyers.[38] In May of 2012, Wallis sought local investors in Wyoming to help finance a plant estimated to help finance the plant, which she said could cost between $2 million and $6 million which would process up to 200 horses a day for sale abroad and to ethnic markets within the U.S.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_slaughter#Transportation_of_horses_for_slaughter

I abhor this industry but I am in no way involved in the workings of livestock management. I consider the words of the PETA representative relevant:

“A law doesn’t change what’s in people’s hearts, and if business people view horses as commodities, ignoring their sensitive natures in favor of the few dollars that their flesh might bring, the horses were sunk from the start,” said David Perle, a spokesman for the group. “To reduce suffering, there should be a ban on the export of live horses, even if that means opening slaughterhouses in the U.S. again. But the better option is to ban slaughter in the U.S. and ban the export of live horses so that no one is slaughtering America’s horses.”