Monday's Wall Street Journal carried an article about horse over population that presents an interesting perspective on the repercussions related to the shut down of American slaughterhouses. In 2007, the last of these foreign owned slaughterhouses was closed due to sustained pressure from numerous animal rights groups including many Fans of Barbaro.
As the article details, horse ownership in the United States has reached record levels over the past decade, fueled in part by retiring baby boomers and their penchant for large homes equipped with everything, including horses grazing in the back yard. These owners often dabble in "backyard breeding' leading to a plethora of horses that may be cute when they are foals, but grow up to eat just as much hay and need just as much veterinary care as their parents. With the recent drought, hay prices have nearly tripled and expenses pile up. The unfortunate result is that many of these horses are turned out to nibble in barren fields and end up literally starving to death.
Enter the wonderful folks who run horse rescue operations, all with good intentions and large hearts, but even they are often overwhelmed by the numbers of horses that need to be rescued. Horse keeping is an expensive hobby and many are sucked in by those big brown eyes that they don't realize need constant care and attention.
In the past, horse slaughter houses, as vile as the thought may be, provided an outlet for unwanted horses. I remember attending a panel discussion at Penn last spring on this very topic. Dr. Midge Leitch, a longtime Penn large animal vet, who actually was a resident with Dean Richardson, Barbaro's surgeon, outlined the facts in black and white. She explained the American Veterinary Medical Association's position of supporting slaughter by saying it was a far more humane end for horses than letting them starve to death. In the most clinical of terms, the practice also controlled overpopulation.
Stark and perhaps not for the soft hearted, but realistic. The costs of keeping, caring for and even euthanizing a horse are often more than the average owner can afford. If nothing else, slaughter plants offered these owners an alternative to simply letting their horses fend for themselves, usually with disastrous results.
I'm actually not sure where I stand on this topic but I do think it's always important to realize that every issue always has two sides.
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3 comments:
Yes, Kit, slaughterhouses do provide an outlet for horses that might otherwise be left to starve . . . and abortion is a perfectly logical alternative to unprotected sex! (I am even pro-choice, but not for the above-mentioned reason.)
If owning/breeding horses does not come with SOME degree of responsibility, then only the poor horse pays. A bullet between the eyes is a far more humane death, if death is the only option, than the proven horrors of the slaughterhouse. The people who, for WHATEVER reason, sell their horses to slaughter should be required to visit the abbatoir or at least view several of the horrific (but actual) videos of the process.
Slaughtering horses because of human-caused equine overpopulation is like "closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out".
I do know about the horror of slaughterhouses and I do agree that a bullet between the eyes is a far more human death but that doesn't account for the costs associated with the disposal of the body. That said, I truly am only trying to present both sides of the issue.
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