On Thursday, a bill (S. 1176 - the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011) was introduced to the U.S. Senate to permanently ban the sale or export of horses (or their body parts) for slaughter. More specific text lifted straight from the Library of Congress's website: "A bill to amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes."
Slaughter is already banned at the state level in the United States, but horses are still allowed to be sold and shipped to Canada and Mexico, where they suffer greatly before they are killed.
In Mexico, a common method of slaughtering the horses is paralyzing them by stabbing them in the spine, and butchering them while they are still fully conscious. This isn't even the beginning of the process. A horse is bought at a sale and crammed into a truck built for much-smaller cattle, where they are subjected to a trip as long as a week without adequate food or water (it's HOT in the South and Mexico!), and no chance to rest or avoid other horses' kicking and biting. It is common for horses to be pulled dead or grievously injured (think: broken legs, severed limbs, severe eye injuries, etc.) from the trailer.
Subjecting a loved one to such a fate should NOT be an option. As Senator Landrieu (a sponsor of the bill) puts it so well, "We raise and train horses to trust us, perform for us, and allow us on their backs, and as such, they deserve to be treated with human compassion."* The very least they deserve is a quick and painless death via humane euthanasia.
The entire text of the bill is not yet available online, but I will keep an eye out for it to keep you posted!
In the meantime, you can contact your own Senators to tell them (nicely and professionally) about how you feel about horse slaughter, and urge them to support the bill so it finally goes through! Then we get to repeat the process in the House of Representatives!
~Amanda
*(http://www.awionline.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/42096/pid/200)
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