Treacherous Trailers

The shipment of horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter is the strongest argument for reopening slaughter plants in the United States.

After United States plants closed in 2007, the need to dispose of horses did not disappear. There were reasons that people sent horses to slaughter plants, and those people still needed to send horses to slaughter plants even after they were closed. In addition, U.S. plants were supplying horse meat for consumption in Europe and Asia, a demand which did not decline in 2007.

In order to continue to meet the need for both slaughter and horse meat, companies in Mexico and Canada began to take horses from and buy horses in the United States. However, in order to get these horses to slaughter plants, they need to be trailered across long distances to both countries. This is where the problems begin.

According to Malinda Osborne, in an article on the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association’s website posted on February 15, 2009, hundreds of thousands of horses have been shipped out of the country for slaughter since 2007. The conditions of these trailer rides are terrible. Trailers are packed with frightened horses, who are more often than not denied adequate food and water. In addition, transporters of theses horses rarely stop to check on their cargo and do not take proper medical care of the animals they are transporting.

Many horses are injured, often severely, and die on these trailer rides. Thoroughbred racing mare, Press Exclusive, was one of these horses bound for slaughter on an overcrowded trailer. She slipped and fell and was trampled by other horses on the trailer and was barely alive when she got to a medical checkpoint. Thankfully, she was saved by the vet checking the horses, and her whole story can be read here. However, not all horses who meet this fate are so lucky.

I don’t agree with most of what animal rights groups such as the Humane Society of the United States and the Animal Welfare Institute say regarding horse slaughter in the United States and its evils. However, I do agree that the trailer rides to slaughter houses in OTHER COUNTRIES and the treatment of horses in slaughter plants in OTHER COUNTRIES is inhumane and needs to stop.

These groups demand that horse slaughter should be made illegal in the United States, but I disagree. I believe that reopening slaughter plants in the United States and properly regulating them will solve the problem of inhumane treatments of American horses in other countries.

Horses wait in a feed lot to be loaded on to a trailer headed for slaughter. The amount of horses put on trailers bound for Canada and Mexico is unsafe. Photo used with permission from Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue via flickr.