End the Slaughter of America’s Horses
Letter from Wayne Pacelle
President & CEO
The Humane Society Of the United States
On Friday, Jan. 19 after years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit finally upheld a 1949 Texas law banning the sale of horsemeat for human consumption. The Humane Society of the United States had filed an amicus brief in the case in March 2006, argueing in favor of the state law banning horse slaughter. Two of the three existing horse slaughter facilities in the United States are located in Texas, and as soom as the ruling goes into effect, Illnois will stand alone as the last state where American horses are slaughtered for foreign dinners.
Last week, U.S. Reps. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL), Ed Whitfield (R-KY), John Spratt (D-SC), and Nick Rahall (D-WV), and U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and John Ensign (R-NV) introduced H.R. 503/S. 311, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. This legislation would ban horse slaughter in the U.S. amd stop the export of horses for slaughter across our borders. Take action to help protect American horses forever!
In the 109th Congress, the U.S. House voted five times and the U.S. Senate voted once to stop horse slaughter, but time ran out before the legislation crossed the finish line. Now, at the beginning of the 110th Congress and with this major Texas court ruling, we are poised for a big push to protect all American horses from this horriable fate. We are coming at the horse slaughter industry from all directions, and they are operating on borrowed time.
We want to shutter these plants every step of the way. We’ll need your action, so please be on the lookout for our updates. With your continued phone calls and emails, Congress will get the job done and save 100,000 horses per year from this grim and painful end. Let’s start now by encouraging lawmakers to cosponser H.R. 503/S. 311 to build support for a permanent ban. With your help, we can make this a historic year for horse protection.
And don’t forget to tell your friends and family to let their legislators know that it’s time to end the brutal slaughter of Americas horses.
Your actions will not only make a difference, theywill help make history. Help us end horse slaughter in the United States forever.
The Dallas Morning News Sunday January 21, 2007 has some really good coverage by Jim Getz Staff Writer Horse meat ban is upheld, it is really good coverage and tells the who, what, where why and who did what to who, it is worth looking up…
Recomended reading BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY The Lost History of A HORSE and A MAN Who Changed the World by MIM EICHLER RIVAS, ISBN 0-06-056703-1, Copywright 2005. It tells of a dramatic shift that took place in the public mind that made kindness to animals a cornerstone of mordern civilization and helped launch the animal rights movement. This happened over a hundred years ago… isn’t it amazing how we backslide with the help of lobbiest and greedy primadonna recipents…
I think people should be able to eat whatever they want. If they want to eat parrots, let them eat parrots. If they want to eat turtles, caribou, sea cucumbers, potatoes, etc.
Why not horses? Why cows? Why pigs? Why not dogs? I did when I visited Vietnam. Tasted a little porky. meat is meat.
The Cloud Foundation http://www.thecloudfoundation.org has ’bout 23 links on horse information to include The American Horse Defense Fund that has a complimentary book on Alternatives to Auction and Slaughter…