End of horse slaughter brings mixed reactions

Jun 21, 2008 NewsOK.com ... The closing of American horse slaughterhouses is more than a bad idea to Barbara Linke.

"It's been almost catastrophic to the horse industry,” said Linke, the director of public policy for the American Quarter Horse Association. "It's a huge problem.”

Congress dropped federal funding for horse slaughterhouse inspections two years ago, and since the country's three remaining plants closed last year, horses have been suffering, she said. Without a regulated way to sell animals for slaughter, owners are neglecting or deserting their horses, she said.

About 100,000 horses become unwanted or unusable each year, Linke said. Thousands of those would have been sent to the slaughterhouses.

"The processing plants were kind of a means to an end,” she said. Now owners must find other solutions.

Irresponsible owners are dumping horses — leaving them on public lands or on the side of the road. They're selling them at public auctions to buyers who then export them out of the country, she said.

Linke and others want better options. Some alternatives she suggests are tax credits for humane euthanasia or euthanasia centers at livestock auctions.

Humane euthanasia has always been an option for unwanted animals, said Catherine English, superintendent of the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division. Closing the slaughterhouses hasn't changed that.

"There's suffering of these horses because these owners are irresponsible,” English said. "It isn't because the government passed a much-needed and long-overdue horse protection bill.”

English said her department hasn't dealt with more abused horses because of the closed slaughterhouses, but she has seen a slightly higher number of underfed horses. She attributes that trend to the lagging economy.

Horses taken in by the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division are given to rescue organizations and not sold at auction, English said.

One of those rescue organizations is Blaze's Tribute Equine Rescue in Jones. Natalee Cross, who founded the rescue with her husband, said she hasn't seen the effects of the slaughterhouse closings at her rescue yet.

She's opposed to horse meat production, but she doesn't know if she's glad the American plants have closed. Horses are still slaughtered, but now they endure a much longer transport and are killed in sometimes unregulated facilities.

Five horse slaughterhouses operate in Canada, and an unknown number are open in Mexico, Linke said. Regulated slaughterhouses in America would be a better option, she said, but that's impossible now.