NEW YORK — With a horse meat controversy raging in Europe, the US Department of Agriculture is likely to approve a horse slaughtering plant in New Mexico in the next two months — making it the first time since 2007 that equine meat suitable for human consumption will be produced in the United States.
The plant, in Roswell, N.M., is owned by Valley Meat Co., which sued the USDA in the fall over the lack of inspection services for horses going to slaughter. Horse meat cannot be processed for human consumption in the United States without inspection by the USDA, so horses destined for that purpose have been shipped to places such as Mexico and Canada for slaughter.
Comments
Cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys are all raised in large numbers, the intent being slaughter and sale as food for humans. There may also be a much smaller production of lamb and sheep flocks for the same purpose, though most such meet sold in East Coast markets seems to be imported from Australia or New Zealand; ditto venison. So a question arises, where in the U.S. are horses raised in such numbers that slaughter, inspection and sale as meat products ae justified? Is this source the mustang herds of Nevada and other western states? The number of smaller horse racing venues seems to have decreased markedly. There is no more U.S. Army cavalry and draught horses are an anachronism. Maybe horse herds the size of buffalo herds?
There are the premarin mares who suffer horribly. There are the rejected race horses - many. Have you looked at the many American based horse rescue organizations who can save only a fraction of horses who will otherwise be sent to slaughter?
http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2012/03/horse-racing.html
One subject the story did not touch upon are the discards from the racing industry, horses that end up in the slaughter pipeline. Thousands of thoroughbreds and quarter horses, no longer performing adequately on the track, are sold off to killer buyers and shipped in cattle trucks to Canada and Mexico. Then they are slaughtered, and their meat is exported to Europe and Asia for human consumption. The HSUS has repeatedly documented inhumane transport and slaughter of horses that were perfectly healthy before the slaughter industry turned them into meat.
<<But some opponents of horse slaughtering say consumption of the meat is ill-advised because of the use of various kinds of drugs in horses.>>
Why do we support horse racing? It's an abomination. Here the horses are made to race, given drugs they do not need and then, when nobody wants them, sent to slaughterhouses.
How monstrous is that? Doesn't anybody care? Geez!
And here is more for people to read.
http://www.hsi.org/news/press_releases/2013/02/horse_meat_moratorium_022013.html
There can be no doubt that substantial numbers of the more than 100,000 American horses slaughtered each year in North America, and sold to Europe, have been administered veterinary drugs, at odds with the lifetime ban on these substances for food animals.
"There is virtually no horse racing around an American track or on exhibition in the show ring who has escaped a prescription for pain-masking drugs clearly prohibited for use in food animals under EU regulations,” said Holly Hazard, senior vice president for equine protection for The HSUS.
What say you, yea or neigh?