COMMENTARY: Taxpayers to pay for unpopular revival of horse slaughter
The reintroduction of horse slaughter plants in the United States comes with a hefty price tag, much of which goes to line the pockets of people in other countries who own these dens of incalculable abuse.
The way it works is that ever since 2005, there has been a section of the Agriculture appropriations bill that de-funds (to wit, bars the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars on) a program for the USDA to inspect foreign-owned horse plants.
Now that the de-funding law has been deleted, supporters of the grisly, completely inhumane process of horse slaughter will go back to lobbying Congress for millions of dollars annually to run the inspection program.
Without inspection, it is illegal to transport horsemeat across state lines. Once they succeed, horse slaughter will resume here.
Let’s forget for the moment that candidate Barack Obama in 2008 pledged to keep the ban on horse slaughter permanent (another promise to voters reneged?)
Let’s forget, too, that American horses are not bred or raised for consumption.
Let’s forget that the few countries where horsemeat is consumed (France, Belgium and Japan among them) are ignoring the outright cruelty to horses that raises the hackles of right-thinking Americans.
The simple question is: Do we want our tax dollars spent to inspect horses that were slaughtered in incredibly cruel fashion (a bolt through the forehead that doesn’t kill them immediately) so foreign owners of slaughter plants can profit?
In the midst of a recession when other crucial programs such as Medicare and education are suffering deep cuts, the answer is a resounding, “no.”
Supporters of horse slaughter say the reintroduction of slaughter plants in the U.S. will create jobs.
An article in the Desert Independent in Blythe, Calif., this month noted, “Horse slaughter plants operating until 2007 … never created a total of more than 178 jobs.” The kind of jobs they do create are of dubious economic value to the individuals who take them and to the communities where slaughter plants are located.
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Update November 18, 2011: Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have now approved the Conference Committee report on H.R. 2112, the bill that, in part, determines agriculture appropriations for FY 2012. President Barack Obama immediately signed the measure, making commercial horse slaughter legal once again in the U.S.
Conference Committee Chair Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) voted to reject de-funding of inspections for equines for slaughter for human consumption. Only Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) voted to support continued de-funding of the inspections.
Without de-funding or prohibition of the inspections, commercial horse slaughter for human consumption is legal in the U.S.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) introduced the amendment to the House version of the bill that would have continued the de-funding of inspections for equines sent to slaughter for human consumption. Without the inspections which have been de-funded or prohibited since 2006, commercial horse slaughter has been illegal and would have remained so with the Moran amendment. But the Senate version did not include such an amendment, and the conference committee and, in particular, the chair persons, appointed to resolve differences between the House and Senate version, rejected de-funding.
President Obama, who has since his election turned a deaf ear to virtually every effort to stop animal cruelty, wasted no time in signing the measure. This despite his campaign promise in 2008 to support an end altogether to equine slaughter for human consumption.
Rep. Moran said, “[W]e’ve far from seen the last word on this issue.
“I am committed to doing everything in my power to prevent the resumption of horse slaughter and will force Congress to debate this important policy in an open, democratic manner at every opportunity. Now, more than ever, it is crucial that Congress pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 2966) to permanently prohibit the slaughter of American horses.”
Exposing The truth About Horse Slaughter
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Go here to find your 2 U.S. senators.
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SHOCK: Horses could be slaughtered for meat in U.S.
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Horses could soon be butchered in the U.S. for human consumption after Congress quietly lifted a 5-year-old ban on funding horse meat inspections, and activists say slaughterhouses could be up and running in as little as a month.
Slaughter opponents pushed a measure cutting off funding for horse meat inspections through Congress in 2006 after other efforts to pass outright bans on horse slaughter failed in previous years. Congress lifted the ban in a spending bill President Barack Obama signed into law Nov. 18 to keep the government afloat until mid-December.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/horses-could-soon-slaughtered-meat-us-080907323.html
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This makes me sick and angry. All for the God damn almighty dollar! These people have no conscience. Greedy sons of bitches that is what they are. They should have to do the killing with their own hands maybe then they would understand the ugliness of the whole business of slaughter. I am fed up!
Who are we that we can just ararbitrarily decide who lives and who dies? Especially for PROFIT! Now these evil cretins in Washington, smuggle in a bill that will allow Horses to be added to the list of animals that we can just kill and eat and profit of. The very trusting animal that carried us undeserving creatures around when we conquered this continent and massacred those that were here before us, all because again we decided they were not as deserving.
I am shamed to belong to this doomed class called the human race! Don’t trust a human because they use you as long as they need you, and they eat you when they don’t need you anymore.
Isn’t it enough that we slaughter and torture billion of chickens and cows and turkeys and what not. The streets should be covered in blood our hands surely are. We are as humans obsessed with violence, we love violence, we teach violence, we preach violence we eat violence. We put on this cloche of righteousness called religion, that we use to justify all our wrongdoings and use to not have to think about the suffering of these creatures! We think of more and news ways to kill and most of it is done by people who then evoke the name of God. God if this entity excises will damn you all straight to hell! I don’t understand the world anymore!
