GAO

The Congress passed, and the President signed the new budget, effectively banning horse slaughter once again by cutting funding for USDA inspections at horse slaughter facilities. Congress did this very same thing in 2006, an action which effectively closed all horse processing plants in the country. Much has happened between then and now. In 2011, the highly respected General Accounting Office (GAO)—Congress’s own watchdog agency—reported bluntly to Congress that their funding cut and the resultant plant closures actually had the opposite effect from that intended. The GAO told Congress that horses were now traveling further (to Mexico and Canada) and in many cases were slaughtered under worse conditions than before, and that their legislation had harmed horse welfare. After receiving that report, in 2011 Congress reinstated the funding for USDA inspections, opening the door for a resumption of horse processing in this country. As a result of that action, the USDA recently gave approval for the opening of horse slaughter plants in New Mexico and Missouri. However, lawsuits filed by animal rights activists repeatedly delayed those openings. “Americans do not want to see scarce tax dollars used to oversee an inhumane, disreputable horse slaughter industry,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “We don’t have dog and cat slaughter plants in the U.S. catering to small markets overseas, and we shouldn’t have horse slaughter operations for that purpose, either.” HSUS and the Obama administration both lobbied to end horse slaughter in the U.S. Yet unsolved, however, is the issue of how to humanely cope with the more than 100,000 unwanted and abandoned horses that used to pass through those processing facilities each year. Click for more details. Posted January 15, 2014

This year, Congress is expected to reverse the defacto ban on horse slaughter in the U.S. Annually, since 2005, the appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has arrived at both houses of Congress with riders (sponsored by the HSUS) disallowing any funds that would allow USDA to inspect horses in transit to slaughter facilities. It was a backdoor move by animal rights activists (and approved by many horse lovers that cannot bear the thought of horses for human consumption) that effectively ended all horse slaughter in the U.S. In a report to Congress earlier this year, the General Accounting Office (GAO)—Congress’s objective and apolitical investigative arm—said in essence that horse welfare has been harmed by the closing of slaughter houses in the U.S. (See Foxhunting Life news report.) This year it appears that Congress will heed the GAO report. The conference committee preparing the legislation for Congress’s vote has omitted these riders to the bill, and once the bill reaches Congress, no amendments can be appended. If the bill passes as expected, USDA inspection of horses in transit could resume, and the reopening of slaughter houses in the U.S. could be economically feasible once again. At the time the last facilities were closed, there were one hundred thousand horses being disposed of annually. As the GAO found during their investigation, retirement facilities were unable to absorb even a small fraction of unwanted horses, and in 2010, 138,000 horses were exported to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. “The horses are traveling farther to meet the same end….in foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply,” said the GAO in their report. Posted November 16, 2011