Horses are known as the “gentle giants” of the earth. These friendly docile animals have not only been around for companionship all these years, but have also been useful forms of transport. Nowadays, horses are status symbols among the richest of society. Many have little knowledge of this, or neglect to see it as a problem, but horses are slaughtered as food sources. Thousands of our “gentle giants” are placed on death row at auctions that take place all over the world.
When a horse is sent to auction, kill buyers from slaughter houses attend in hopes of purchasing horses at low prices to be sent out of the country. Once purchased, these animals have to endure horrible living conditions while they travel countless hours in small spaces, spaces only big enough to fit about a third of how many should be allowed to travel in horse trailers.
During transport many horses suffer severe injuries. Eyeballs hang off. Their faces are bruised and bloodied. Their legs are severely injured or missing. Transport can take days, leaving these animals trapped in the crowded confines of trailers without food, water, and rest. Lack of segregation of more dominant, young, old, or injured horses makes fighting, injury, and even death a frequent occurrence on slaughter-bound trailers. The journey is only half the battle however; once the trailers arrive at their sought out destination, several injured horses are unloaded and prepped for slaughter.
There are only two government approved ways to stun a horse. A worker will attempt to render the horses unconscious with either a captive bolt gun or a rifle, but since horses brains are set further back in the head, one shot may not necessarily knock them unconscious, just frighten them and send them into severe pain. They are killed through a process called “exsanguination,” or hanging the horse upside down by the feet suspended in the air. Many flail around hopelessly, and often their joints will dislocate due to the weight of their bodies beneath them. A worker will then slit the throat of the hanging horse, and watch as it bleeds to death in probably one of the most painful ways possible. Many will fight and kick during the process out of fear, and hidden video cameras have shown workers beating horses with crowbars and other objects to keep them in line.
The U.S. had succesfully banned this process until now. On Nov. 8, President Obama signed a bill, stating that slaughter houses were to reopen in the U.S., after having been closed since 2007. The lift of the ban was encouraged by Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Committee, who is adament that this will help to curb cases of animal neglect and create much-needed jobs in the U.S.
The AVMA and agriculture businesses continue to pretend that horse slaughter is considered “humane euthanasia.” If we were doing this humanely, then we’d be injecting these animals with 120ccs of barbiturate to depress the nervous system and send them into cardiac arrest, without any pain.  Congress passed this legislation in hopes to ending the long travels that these horses were having to endure from the U.S. into other countries. We maybe limiting the abuse in that sense, but by following the same precedures in the actual slaugther process, this is nothing more than a poor attempt to excuse the true nature of the business.
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nstimack@coloradomesa.edu