Horse owners are on a roll

The HSUS Facts on US Horse Slaughter

***Which kinds of horses are slaughtered?

Horses slaughtered include (losing race horses) lame or ill, riding school, camp horses, pergnant mares, foals -"byproducts" of (PMU), drug Premarin®. Ponies, mules, donkeys as well.

HSUS investigators witnessed horses purchased for slaughter in good health, bought for a few hundred dollars. Horses of all ages & breeds are slaughtered, from draft to miniatures.
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***How many horses are slaughtered each year?

(Tens of thousands) of live horses are transported across the border to
Mexico and Canada for slaughter.
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***Who eats horse meat?
The largest markets are France, Belgium, Holland, Japan, and Italy.

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***How do unwanted, surplus horses end up at slaughterhouses?

Most horses destined for slaughter are sold at livestock auctions or sales. Often, terrified horses and ponies are crammed together and transported to slaughter in double-deck trucks designed for cattle and pigs. Some horses arrive at the slaughterhouse seriously injured or dead.
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***How are the horses killed?

Highly alert horses are stabbed multiple times in the neck with "puntilla knife" to sever spinal cords. The horse is conscious, is "not" stunning method. It paralyzes, leaving horses twitching on the ground, unable to move or breathe, death from suffocation or blood loss & dismemberment. With US export of horses to slaughter over 300%, undercover footage shows live horses dragged, whipped, crammed in trucks in 110 tmp to a horrific form of slaughter in MX & CN. Conditions in slaughterhouses—stressful & extremely frightening.
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***What is The Humane Society of the United States doing to protect horses?

The HSUS continues to assist states in passage of effective laws to govern treatment of horses sold for slaughter within their borders.
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More Facts on Horse Slaughter:
http://www.hsus.org/horses_equines/issues/get...

Racing Industry Is Stuck in Perpetual Post Time

William C Rhoden

Thoroughbred racing has been too slow to change.

An insular industry built on horses and gambling is out of step, out of touch and out of sync with contemporary American culture.

Even the industry’s reaction to the death of Eight Belles was typically defensive, a massive circling of the wagons. Critics were accused of not knowing the game, not knowing the sport.

Casual fans know what they see. They peek in on this world three times a year — in Louisville, this week in Baltimore and next month in New York.

The fatal misstep of Barbaro during the 2006 Preakness Stakes and now the death of Eight Belles after the 2008 Kentucky Derby compels casual viewers to look at racing as some sort of barbaric enterprise. They have seen heartbreaking accidents in two of the last three Triple Crown seasons and can draw their own conclusions.

“There is going to be a part of society that will never understand,” said Doug Reed, the director of the University of Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program.“Racing will always be a niche product.”

Reed, 52, joined Arizona’s 34-year-old program in 1994 after an extensive run in the thoroughbred industry. He has worked at nearly every level of the industry — from maintenance crew to racing official — and at tracks in a number of states, including Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and New Mexico.

The industry has a much greater problem than convincing the public that it does not abuse animals. It needs to become a player in a booming gaming industry once again. While the gaming industry was gaining by leaps and bounds in the 1990s, racing, fat from its profits, fell behind.

"Things that were not issues 20 years ago are more on people’s minds these days,” he said.“Animal rights, animal safety. Anything to do with animals. I notice it in our students.

Imagine yourself inside this slaughterhouse!
You are seeing what the horses go through as they approach their violent death. You first spot the horses in a holding pen, standing depressed and confused on the slippery concrete floors. Suddenly, they're moved to a chute and lined up facing what's called the "kill box." Now, depression has turned to terror. What you see is unmistakable. The horses are trembling violently and urinating on themselves. The horse has an acute sense of hearing and smell, well beyond human development. The smell of death is palpable and the horses are reacting with panic and fear. They clearly perceive they are next in line for horrific pain and death.
You see the horse; you've been following, funneled into the death trap. A slaughterhouse worker wields a mechanical instrument. Suddenly, the man brings it down with force on the horse's skull. It is a retractable bolt that fractures the horse's skull, but doesn't always render the animal senseless. The horse's bone fragments are driven into the animal's brain along with the bolt.
The terror and pain the horse experiences at this moment are unimaginable. The aim of the bolt is NOT to kill the horse, but just to immobilize the animal with the force of the blow. The horse collapses either on the first, second or the third blow. The horse falls onto a conveyer belt, where one hind leg is entrapped in a device that lifts the horse in the air UPSIDE DOWN...STILL ALIVE!!! This device hangs the horse, it's head dangling toward the floor, STILL ALIVE, and then it's THROAT IS CUT OPEN, so the blood will drain out until the animal's heart beats for the last time. They're bled to death, which is what is required for the horsemeat to be certified for human consumption. 6505

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