MUSTANG SLAUGHTER TO RETURN?

January 15, 2005

Just two days after the U.S. Senate passed Resolution 452 naming December 13, 2004 the National Day of the Horse, that same body passed an Omnibus Appropriations Bill with language gutting long-standing protections for wild horses that currently disallow their sale for slaughter.

The resolution language bestows recognition that horses, both wild and domestic, are a “living link to the history of the United States,” that they are a “vital part” of the “collective experience” of the U.S. and that they “deserve protection and compassion.”

Ironically, the omnibus language, which was slipped in by Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) and subsequently passed by Congress, mandates that any excess horse or burro be sold “without limitation” to the highest bidder “if the animal is more than 10 years of age” or “has been offered unsuccessfully for adoption at least 3 times.” This means thousands of wild horses will be taken from holding facilities or the range and sent directly to auction, where they are likely to be bought for slaughter by “killer buyers.” These killer buyers purchase and transport the horses to one of three foreign-owned plants in the U.S. that slaughter horses for human consumption in Europe and Asia.

Protection for wild horses in the U.S. was mandated under the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act after decades of assaults on their populations. Before this act was passed, hundreds of thousands of horses and burros were summarily shot or rounded up and sent to slaughter for the pet food industry, and removed from public land permanently. At the turn of the century, there were some two million wild horses but by the time the federal law was passed, there were estimated to be less than one percent left. There are an estimated 4.1 million cattle and 36,000 wild horses on our public lands, yet the cattle industry has maintained that there is still not enough rangeland for their livestock even though these cattle represent less than 3% of the total beef consumed in the U.S.

Velma Johnston, aka Wild Horse Annie, was the woman responsible for the passage of the 1971 Act. Her tireless efforts stopped the slaughter of America’s wild horses and protected them permanently—until this bill with the wild horse rider was passed by Congress.

Redwings Horse Sanctuary would like to ask our members to write to their political representatives and ask them to “remember the wild horses,” as the Senate Resolution for the National Day of the Horse requires, and to quickly pass legislation correcting this tragic error when they reconvene in 2005. We promise to work tirelessly until America’s wild horses and burros are safe from the slaughterhouse once again.

This article is based on a press release from American Horse Protection Association along with American Horse Defense Fund, American Humane Association, Doris Day Animal League, Fund for Animals, The Humane Society of the United States, and the Society for Animal Protective Legislation.

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