State Level Laws

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Pro-Slaughter Resolutions Piling Up in State Legislatures
Posted Mar 16, 2009 by lauraallen
o                  Horse Slaughter
Take action now to oppose the many pending state bills and resolutions that support horse slaughter.

There are now several bills and resolutions pending in state legislatures that call for the defeat of the federal anti-horse slaughter bill, H.R. 503, and some propose to support horse slaughter operations in their states by first funding costly studies, calling for the location of a horse slaughter facility in the state, or creating special exemptions from judicial intervention in the building or operation of these facilities.

Since Animal Law Coalition first reported this to you and in the past several days, there have been a number of bills or resolutions introduced including in Georgia, Idaho, Iowa and South Carolina.

Resolutions calling for the defeat of H.R. 503 have already passed overwhelmingly in Utah, Missouri and Wyoming.
It is important to voice your opposition to these bills and resolutions. In addition to those in Illinois, North Dakota and Montana, these bills and resolutions are pending in these states:

Georgia H.R. 583is a resolution calling for the defeat of H.R. 503 and was introduced on March 11, 2009 by House Agriculture Committee members Reps. Terry England, Tom McCall and Gene Maddox, the same committee that claimed a week earlier there was not time this session to consider a bill to end the use of animal gas chambers and other cruel methods of killing dogs and cats in Georgia's public shelters. Apparently, they have plenty of time to consider horse slaughter and the implications to the state in encouraging this seedy, barbaric practice.

Find Georgia representatives here and state senators here. If you live in Georgia, find your legislators here. Here is a list of House Agriculture Committee members. Write (faxes are best) or call and urge them to vote NO to H.R. 583. If you live in Georgia, tell them you live in their District.
Name/Title e-mail address Telephone/fax #s
Tom McCall, Committee Chairperson,Farmer tommccall@   bellsouth.net 404.656.5115 O
706.283.5436 H
706.283.6656 F
Terry England, Vice-chair of Committee
Agribusiness/Farmer englandhomeport2@   alltel.net 404.656.0183 O
770.867.1601 O
770.867.8096 H
770.867.2160 F
Dr. Gene Maddox, Committee Secretary
Retired veterinarian gene.maddox@   house.ga.gov 404.656.0152 O
229.377.1812 H
229.221.4595 C
Ellis Black
Farmer 404.656.0287 O
229.251.0303 C 229.559.1592 F
Jon Burns
Agribusiness jon.burns@   house.ga.gov
404.656.0213 O
912.754.3439 O
Pat Dooley
Retired pat.dooley@   house.ga.gov 404.656.0116
Winfred Dukes
Contractor/Realtor Wdukes_2000@   yahoo.com
404.656.0126 O
229.432.9891 O
229.883.8537 O
229.883.2188 F
Carl Epps
Insurance carl.epps@   house.ga.gov 706.884.6768 H
706.884.0408 F
404.656.7859 O
Buddy Harden
No occupation listed ohhjr@   sowega.net 404.656.0109 O
229.535.6050 H
404.909.5767 C

Penny Houston
Community Volunteer penny.houston@   house.ga.gov
229-686-2467 H
404-656-0202 O

Lynmore James
Farmer lynmore.james@   house.ga.gov
478-472-6391 H
478-472-5064 O
404-656-0116 O
404-656-0250 F
478-951-7339 C
Kevin Levitas
Vice-President -Legal//Marketing for Hill Manufacturing Co., Inc. kevinlevitas@   bellsouth.net
o                        404-634-9171 H
404-656-0116 O

Billy Maddox
Attorney billy.maddox@   house.ga.gov
404-656-0109 O

Dubose Porter
Newspaper Editor/Attorney 478-272-5522 O 404-656-5058 O
Jay Roberts
Farmer jay.roberts@   house.ga.gov
404-656-5025 O
229-468-5404 H
229-425-5404 O
229-468-7018 F
Tony Sellier
Retired businessman, Farmer reptonysellier136@   msn.com 478-825-2888 H
478-827-0034 F 404-656-0265 O 478-827-0034 F
Chuck Sims
No occupation listed 912-384-7138 H
912-384-1234 O
912-384-1709 F
404-656-0287 O
Tommy Smith
Farmer
912-632-0001 H 404-656-5105 O
Contact Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and tell him you don't support H.R. 583 and don't want horse slaughter in Georgia.

The horse slaughterers' strategy
These resolutions and bills are a not-so-subtle ploy by the foreign investors that own horse slaughter houses to defeat H.R. 503 which would ban the sale, transport, and possession of horses in interstate and foreign commerce for slaughter for human consumption.

Even without H.R. 503, horse slaughter cannot occur legally in the U.S. There is no point in states appropriating tax dollars for studies when currently horse slaughter for human consumption is not allowed in the U.S. These resolutions will simply insure horse slaughterers can continue to take American horses to Mexico or Canada for slaughter.

There is also another goal: to make horse slaughter acceptable to Americans and, in fact, create a market in the U.S. for the consumption of horsemeat. The resolution proposing the North Dakota study says as much. If Americans begin eating horsemeat, the theory is that Congress will be forced to fund ante-mortem inspections. Under current law because these required inspections are not funded, horse slaughter is not legal in the U.S. For more on this.....

Keep in mind when the remaining 3 horse slaughter houses in the U.S. closed in 2007, they were owned by foreign companies, Dallas Crown, Inc.; Cavel International, Inc. and Beltex Corp., which now operates a horse slaughter house in Mexico, Empacadora de Carnes de Fresnillo.

There is no econmic benefit to any state in a horse slaughter facility. Even when there were horse slaughter houses in the U.S., they were part of a horse meat industry that was only 0.001% of the U.S. meat industry. The foreign-owned U.S. horse slaughterhouses paid little in income taxes. One facility paid $5 in federal taxes on $12 million in sales. These slaughter houses paid no export taxes, meaning the U.S. government effectively subsidized the sale of horse meat to consumers generally in parts of Asia, South America and Europe.

The profits went to the foreign investors. The communities where horse slaughter houses were located were left with horrific odors of dying and dead horses, blood literally running down the streets, and illegally dumped waste. Attached are the numerous violations of Cavel's facility while it operated in Dekalb, Illinois. It is simply a waste of taxpayer dollars for a state to subsidize these sleazy practice. It is akin to supporting dog fighting rings.

If there is any doubt about this, read the Open Letter from former Kaufman, Texas mayor, Paula Bacon, who held office when a horse slaughter facility operated in her town.

Horse slaughter is also not a means of controlling numbers of "unwanted horses". This is a myth perpetuated by the horse slaughter industry that is simply repeated over and over again as in these resolutions.

Horse slaughter is a multi million dollar a year business that is driven by a demand for horse meat. Kill buyers buy horses at auction for slaughter, and the USDA has said over 92% of American horses slaughtered, are healthy, not old, sick, injured, or neglected. These horses were not unwanted; they were simply sold at auction, and their owners had no control over who purchased them. Without the kill buyers who skulk around horse auctions, looking for the best potential horse meat, most of these horses would be purchased by others or end up in rescues or sanctuaries.

As John Holland, a free lance writer and researcher on horse slaughter and consultant for Americans Against Horse Slaughter, has explained, "Kill buyers do not go around the country like dog catchers gathering ‘unwanted horses' as a public service."

Americans Against Horse Slaughterpoints out, "Just over 100,000 horses were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2006. If slaughter were no longer an option and these horses were rendered or buried instead, it would represent a small increase in the number of horse being disposed of in this manner - an increase that the current infrastructure can certainly sustain. Humane euthanasia and carcass disposal is highly affordable and widely available. The average cost of having a horse humanely euthanized and safely disposing of the animal's carcass is approximately $225, while the average monthly cost of keeping a horse is approximately $200."

Also, the horse slaughter industry actually encourages the over breeding of horses. Because owners can make money from the brutal slaughter of their horses, they have an incentive to over breed. As actor and horse rescuer Paul Sorvino put it, "37% of those horses are going to be slaughtered because they couldn't run fast enough....So, it's run for your life." If the slaughter of horses for human consumption is illegal, there is no reward for over breeding.

Sadly, pro-slaughter groups have disseminated disinformation in the media to convince the public that without horse slaughter, there will be large numbers of abandoned, abused and neglected horses. (Even if that were true, which it is not, it is not clear how substituting one form of cruelty for another is somehow a solution.)

Indeed, these reports in the media have proven to be unfounded. A study released last year showed a decrease in horse abuse and neglect cases following closure of the last U.S. horse slaughter house in 2007. Any abandoned or neglected horses are not a result of a lack of horse slaughter houses.

Historically, there have not been increases in abandoned, neglected or abused horses following closures of horse slaughter houses. In 2002 the Illinois slaughter house burned to the ground and was out of commission for some time. Reports of abandoned, abused and neglected horses in the Illinois area were actually on the rise in the 2 years before the fire but decreased afterwards.

Remember the number of horses slaughtered in the U.S. dropped significantly from over 300,000 annually in the 1990s to 66,000 in 2004. There was no notable increase during that time of abandoned, abused or neglected horses.
When California banned horse slaughter in 1998, there was no rise in cases of cruelty or neglect to horses. In fact, there was a 39.4% decrease initially and that rose to 88% eventually in horse thefts. (What does that tell you about this "business"?)

Also, from 2004-2007 5000 horses were imported into the U.S. for slaughter. If horse slaughter occurs because of all the unwanted horses, why would these horse slaughter businesses need to import them? The answer is, of course, they wouldn't. Horse slaughter has nothing to do with controlling numbers of unwanted horses. It is a business driven by a demand for horse meat primarily as a delicacy in foreign countries.

As Americans Against Horse Slaughter puts it, "The ‘surplus horse population' [argument] is a scare tactic."
Horse slaughter is also in no sense humane euthanasia. That much has been established by documents recently released in response to a FOIA request. The captive bolt gun used in the U.S. slaughterhouses did not typically render horses senseless before slaughter. The slaughter houses never bothered to restrain the horses' heads or use only trained personnel to operate the gun.

As John Holland has explained, "In its 2000 report on methods of Euthanasia, the AVMA stated that the captive bolt gun should not be used on equines unless head restraint could be assured. This is because of the relatively narrow forehead of equines, their head shyness and the fact that the brain is set back further than in cattle for which the gun is intended. It is difficult for an operator to assure proper placement of the gun.

"No slaughter house ever found a practical way to restrain the heads of the horses, so by the AVMA's very definition, the process was not acceptable. The result was a very large number of ineffective stuns. These misplaced blows undoubtedly caused severe pain until a stunning or fatal blow was delivered."

Imagine the pain and terror experienced by horses as bolts were repeatedly fired at their heads many times by untrained operators. Many times horses were still conscious when they were then hoisted upside down for slaughter.
For more information on the brutality of horse slaughter in the U.S., click here to read the July 25, 2006 testimony of Christopher J. Heyde, Deputy Legislative Director for Animal Welfare Institute, before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. Click here to read testimony offered during a Congressional hearing in 2008 about the cruelty of horse slaughter.

Also, listen here to a discussion on WFL Endangered Stream Live Talk Radio about horse slaughter by Laura Allen, Executive Director of Animal Law Coalition; John Holland, journalist and consultant for Americans Against Horse Slaughter; Dr. Nena Winand, DVM with Veterinarians for Equine Welfare and Paula Bacon, former mayor of Kaufman, Tx and leader of the fight to shut down the horse slaughter facility that operated there until 2007.   (Download this broadcast!)

Then contact your U.S. representative  and urge him or her to vote YES on the Conyers-Burton Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2009, H.B. 503.

Also, tell your representative to vote YES on H.R. 305, the Horse Transportation Safety Act, which will put an end to all transports of horses on double decked trailers.

Where You Can Find More Information on Horse Slaughter
WFL Endangered Stream Live, Saving Our Horses
Read Frequently Asked Questions About Unwanted Horses and the AVMA's Policy on Horse Slaughter
Read Veterinarians for Equine Welfare's Horse Slaughter - Its Ethical Impact and Subsequent Response by the Veterinary Profession

Attachment Size
CAVEL VIOLATIONS.xls 94.5 KB
PLEASE HELP SAVE AMERICAS HORSES_Final.pdf 413.64 KB
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