Slaughter ban sending horses across borders

[Synicus Maximus]

Source: Washington Times

GAO says policy has led to ‘unintended consequences’

Congress imposed a back-door ban on horse slaughter in 2006 to try to improve humane conditions, but a new government report says it has backfired and the same horses are now being exported for slaughter in Canada and Mexico, and they likely are suffering more along the journey.

The Government Accountability Office said the policy has led to “unintended consequences” such as depressed prices for all horses and an increase in reports of animal neglect, abuse and abandonment. GAO said Congress and the Obama administration may need to revisit the entire issue.

“Those horses are traveling farther to meet the same end in foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply,” GAO said in unusually blunt language that said that the horses are sometimes shipped in too-small containers for hundreds of miles, and that the inspection regime is too lax to help.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/23/slaughter-ban-sending-horses-across-borders/