Montana and Horse Slaughter

[Solitaire]

I wanted to post this, in case you might be against your state opening a horse slaughter plant.

If you are against this, please sign the petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/319413487.

Thank you.

Sol :)

[John Q. Citizen]

1. I am for it so that old infirm and sick horses may be disposed of humanly and environmentally

soundly.

Ever been to Montana, Sol?

[Solitaire]

2. horse slaughter

Is this humane?

http://www.sharkonline.org/?P=0000000528

http://www.kaufmanzoning.net/foiaphotos.html

You will have an ecological disaster on your hands, in addition to having a house of horror housed right on your doorstep.

You should also read this letter from former Mayor Paula Bacon, who had this Belgian owned slaughter house on her own doorstep and through many years was finally able to rid herself of this ecological disaster: http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/686

Please let me know if you are still for this bill, after reading the above.

And, I have never been to Montana but have always wanted to visit. I won't visit though if this slaughter house is opened.

Best,

Sol

[John Q. Citizen]

3. Outlawing the slaughter of livestock is dumb. People eat horse meat all over the world. And

dogs and cats eat it here and all over the world.

Lewis and Clark and the Nez Pierce ate horse meat.

In a world stressed for resources making a perfectly good renewable resource off limits is stupid. It makes horses more expensive and means horses who should be mercifully put down won't be because it will now cost their owners extra money to do the right thing.

You want to pass laws about our horses?

No!

Waste is a sin.

The whites killed the buffalo and wasted the meat. they wasted the hide.


Enough waste. Use the meat. Use the hide.

[Solitaire]

4. I guess...

you didn't read the above post with the links? I can only assume that, after reading your post.

In a world stressed for resources, horse meat as a delicacy is not going to help anyone except for your pocket book, evidently.

Btw, please educate yourself before you post; horse meat has not been used in any dog food in the United States for the last 20 years. The reason is that no one will purchase it.

Speaking of "whites" killing the buffalo, I guess you are on the wrong side of this one. Take a look at the list of those against horse slaughter and you will find, Chief Arvol Looking Horse - 19th generation keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle and holds the responsibility of spiritual leader among the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota People

http://www.awionline.org/legislation/horse_slaughter/supporters_of_ahspa.htm

One last thing, if you open a slaughter house, it affects the rest of this country. If my horse is stolen it can wind up at your slaughter house. So, it's about -our- horses.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. I read the links. they are long on emotion and short on empathy. If you are rich enough to own

horses and live in NY City, well congratulations.

Most horse owners aren't so rich. In fact many horse owners aren't rich at all, once you leave the city.

I'm horrified at the way your police use horses for crowd control. Every year horses are hurt doing this. They are forced to breath all that polluted air. Yet you aren't spending your time demanding the cops respect horses. No, you want to control my livestock, tell me what i can keep livestock for.

Every year, horses are hit by cars. Are you demanding cars be outlawed? No. Why not? Ford, GM, and Toyota every day are building horse killing machines. these are daily occurrences,not an undercover investigation. machines.http://www.google.com/search?q=Horses+hit+by+cars&ie=UT-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
. my hopoe is a

Horses aren't natural to the Western Hemisphere. They are an invasive species introduced by greedy horse flesh eating humans.

The ultimate goal should be to eradicate horses from the western hemisphere, since they aren't part of the natural ecology. they are invaders. The less horses are worth, the easier it will be to do. You realize they spread invasive weeds, right?


In the mean time, I'm writing my representatives and asking them to both support the ability of livestock owners to sell their live stock, and for the regular inspection of horse slaughter facilities (as well as the bison slaughter facilities, and the pig goat sheep and cattle slaughter facilities) and to be sure the work is carried out without unnecessary pain and suffering being inflicted.

Part of the problem is the shortage of local facilities. Having to transport often sick animals great distances needs to be eliminated, now! This is causing un- necessary pain and suffering. My hope is a reasonably humane facility can be put in Montana, and we can stop the New Yorkers from causing more pain and suffering on horses by their misguided "solutions" making long transport mandatory. how much more pain this has already caused is enormous. Yet the people responsible somehow find this acceptable.

In the meantime, New Yorkers treating horses like slaves and forcing them to perform military missions in cities that result in harm and injury is unbelievable. Are you all barbarians? Why haven't you stopped that?

I am opposed to laws requiring the eating of livestock, and I'm also opposed to laws prohibiting the eating of livestock. Just because quite a few Hindus in India support their cow laws isn't compelling evidence for similar horse laws here in the US. Yes, I know the fundies have outlawed pork in lots of places. There is a significant amount of religious regulation of food.

Sorry. I'm not a fundie. i look both my horse guests in my back yard in the eye and tell them straight up, 'the reason I don't eat you is because I don't have to.' I tell my 2 pack goats the same.

And I'm glad I don't have to and I hope I never will. But if i did, i would.

Want to know what is interesting? If you walked around and asked the people where i live who own horses if they support banning horse slaughter my sense it that most people support peoples right to own and operate a slaughter house. And most people don't find it fundamentally wrong to slaughter a horse, in fact many owners face the fact that at some point they may have to put an animal down.

At the same time, the vast majority of those same people would probably support some basic standards of industry operation. We all want slaughtered animals to be treated with basic humanity. Everyone wants a happy steak, a smiling egg plant, and Charlie tuna or Charlie horse in the cat food.

So you have a political problem. By promoting the abolishment of slaughter houses you are seen locally as hopelessly naive and out of touch. But you do have room to move on accepted industry practices and state regulation, I think.

Also, a better plan would probably be to just out bid the slaughter house. You should move to a rural area and spend your days attending to horses respect and well being. Staying in NY isn't helping divert horses from the slaughter house. Somebody has to shovel the shit out of the stall, after all. And that person isn't you. Why not?

Either that, or you should lead the move to get horses out of the military/police realm, starting with your town.
Every time I see them in a parade on TV I cringe. Forcing them to breath all that polluted air. It's abuse.

We saw a Moose a few days ago, browsing with her calf. Every horse in this valley is their mortal enemy. Do you know how much land it takes to produce enough hay to feed a horse for a year here? That's all land that is no longer supporting that moose and her baby. The nutrients stolen from the native inhabitants and given to the invaders from Central Asia.

It's tough all over I guess.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ono]

8. Good grief, do you believe what you type?

I personally have never seen posts so mixed up with thought!
I wonder if this is the way you are with every issue, or just with the horse issue?

So in your mind, horses from Asia should not be eating grasses from Montana that were meant for moose and her baby, and elk, and bison, and muleys, etc, etc, etc.
People buy their horses hay. How many wild herds of horses to you have in MT, do you even know?
I guess you are one of those we are told not to waste our breath on...so so!

No more response from me, I know what goes on in the land of BLUE SKIES and RED SNOW!
And it ain't pretty, MT's tourism will suffer with horse killing, but true Montanians don't care about that anyway, they WANT California to go home. But the state will care. I have sure there are many thousands that have never came back after witnessing one of the infamous DOL hazes or bison stampede's they create, right into the slughter corral.

Funny thing is, according to you, horses are NOT from the west and they should be slaughtered, so what is your take on the bison then, they are from the West and they are still slaughtered like 200 years ago.

Big question is, how much progress that the blue skies, red snow actually made?

[John Q. Citizen]

9. Horses are livestock. What do you imagine livestock are for? Why do owners buy them hay

(or grow, cut and bail their own/) Land put into hay production isn't producing wild plants for wild animals to browse on. Just the diversion of water to grow hay impacts all sorts of species.

There are no wild horses in America. There are some herds of feral horses.

The one slaughter house I've been to (in Sta Cruz, CA) did their work indoors. So there was no RED RAIN puddles next to the REDWOODS. I would imagine the same would apply to Montana and your concerns about the color of snow. Much of the time when there is snow on the ground the skies are gray, anyway.

You do know we aren't the "Blue Sky" State, right? We are the Big Sky state. When their is smoke in the summer those big skies are red at sunset.


People need a place to take their live stock to be slaughtered, butchered, and packed. The OP would wish to convey upon horses the legal description of "unslaughterable" I simply say "Bullshit!" Horses are livestock and as such should be legally available for slaughter. If someone wishes to make a horse their accountant, or a sheep their bff, well, the world is made up of a lot of strange people. But there are thousands of years of history of humans consuming horses.

On the other hand, people like yourself could actually put up signs and ads in the newspaper and say.

"Don't have your horse slaughtered. Bring them to us and we will give you 100 dollars and then care feed and provide for the upkeep of the horse."

My bet is most people would do that. So how much progress have you made? Why aren't you providing a solution to what you see as a problem?


As for the Yellowstone Bison, I think having the Stock Growers Assn. control them is bad policy. These Bison in particular are wild and should be managed as such. They aren't cattle and horses.

I'm still in wait and see mode as to the recent moves of the Schweitzer admin. There is a certain consistency to allowing public harvest as with deer and elk, and other wild food species (what many humans see as food) I think that could be a big improvement over the current situation. I also think we need to invest in a lot of science to actually know just what if any the brucellosis transmission risks actually are.

[Solitaire]

5. from a vet with permission to x-post and note, she is from Montana

Hello,

I know many of you and many of you know me. I know many of you to be very good, honest, decent people and it saddens me to see the lies that are being spread about the issue of horse slaughter. We are all entitled to our beliefs as we are entitled to share & stand up for our beliefs. I feel the need to clarify some absolute lies that have been circulating via email.

If you are in favor of horse slaughter, you are entitled to that, but please know some truths. The pictures and videos are real. They are not made up or sensationalized. The wounds, broken legs, foals born in feed lots, pictures of shod horses, pictures of peoples pet horses in feed lots and at slaughter, videos of horses being repeatedly hit with the captive bolt, overturned cattle trucks with 60 horses mangled….those things are real, they are not made up or sensationalized. Please just accept that fact for what it is. Horse slaughter and its journey for the horse is not humane. If you are OK with that treatment of the horse, that is certainly your choice, but it is sad to me when I hear people deceiving themselves by saying that they are sending their horse to slaughter because it is humane. If I offered to buy your horse and guarantee you that I would haul it and treat it inhumanely then kill it in an inhumane method, there is no way that many of you would sell your horse to me. But that is what we are doing when we drop off our horse at the sale ring and walk away with a small check and a rosy thought in our mind that our horse went to some green pasture with a good owner, mind you, many horses do get this good end, but many do not and to close our eyes & just hope it all works is sad because reality is, the slaughter horse is destined for a very bad journey.

I am tired of the emails circulating that say PETA is sensationalizing, blah, blah, blah. The truth is PETA is NOT at all involved. The people who are spreading that rumor to incite anger are really being ridiculous. I have been a very involved person against horse slaughter, I know the opponents and I assure you PETA is not involved. I also assure you that other rumors circulating are false as well. There is not an abandoned horse problem, the Montana Grass Roots Horse Coalition has done a county by county survey and the rumors are false. Additionally, the allegations have been studied on a national level and have been proven false. It is a ridiculous argument anyway because the reality is that there is still a loose horse market, horse slaughter is still going on so if there were abandoned horses, the people who would do that would do it regardless of access to a slaughter facility as there is still access to horse slaughter. This false rumor is being spread by proponents to incite fear.

Furthermore, the Montana Grass Roots Horse Coalition is simply a group of Montana horse people who are against horse slaughter. In fact, some of the people started out leaning towards being more in favor of slaughter, then the more they researched & studied the issue, they failed to see how or why horse slaughter is a good thing. Not one person who is at the core of the group is a member of PETA, not one person is a vegetarian, not one person is an animal activist and they are all really nice people from around the state who live year round in Montana. Most of you would really like them if you were to ever meet them (or, if you do know them, you already know them to be good people). It is shameful for Linda Grosskopf, the editor of Western Ag Reporter and Stan Weaver to say that the group was made up by Animals Angels. The thing that is made up is the email Stan circulated. That organization does have a website and I personally have downloaded and distributed some of their stuff, but that organization is in no way connected to the Montana Grass Roots Horse Coalition. The reality is that Linda and Stan out & out lied to you about this issue. One of the people in the Montana Grass Roots Horse Coalition does have that email address and she did email around fact sheets. It is ironic that so many of the emails Stan Weaver is sending have so many false things in them and are sent in such a way as to try to elicit fear. Fear of who is involved and lies to create fear. If you are a horse slaughter proponent, you are certainly entitled to that opinion but please make your decisions on facts, not lies or fear.

It is true that the opponents have hired a lobbyist to fight HB 418, but it is also true that AQHA has spent well into 6 digits on their own lobbying for horse slaughter. Additionally, there are MT organizations that have also hired lobbyists in favor of horse slaughter, I assure you, this is no fear that proponents should have, they have more lobbyists than the opponents. Additionally, it is very confusing how AQHA can campaign for us to have horses as partners, family members and pets and yet promote horse slaughter. No wonder so many people don’t want to face the reality of how cruel horse slaughter is. The AQHA is totally advertising a double standard.

Another thought, the horse slaughter industry wants young, healthy animals…it is a human meat consumption industry, they do not want the old, thin crippled horses. This is not a way to get rid of old horses. The average age of the horse slaughtered is 7. This is reality, so it really should be asked, do you want to raise horses as food animals. That is really the issue and that is what beliefs should be based on. Certainly there are people who will say yes to this and people who will say no but let us argue about that fact, not fears and lies.

There are horses that are unsafe, horses that are ill, people that cannot afford their horses. What would happen if all of us great minds in the horse community came together to deal with these things as a community. What happens if the lobbying money (assuredly, proponents have spent far more than opponents) was used to help programs develop. To help create euthanasia funds, spay and gelding programs, rescue programs, educational programs, feed programs to help people through a short term crisis with their horses, scholarships to help fund equine programs, and lots of other positive things that haven’t yet been thought of.

Furthermore, we have learned so much about the care of older horses that still have great value in the horse community…their value in human rehab programs, human therapeutic programs, teachers to young & silly colts and teachers to young and/or inexperienced horse people. There is a lot of work that can be created around these old horses, jobs and money that can stay in our communities and in our industry. Horses of all ages need farrier work, veterinary work, dental work, massage & other body work, feeds, caretaking jobs, etc. All of this is part of the horse community and supports that community. Slaughter plants simply take their profits overseas. Except for the sale rings and killer buyers who make money on slaughter horses, but they do have a food animal market to make money on. They can still make their money there.

Why not come up with good, positive ways to treat our horses humanely and create good and honest work in the horse community. Why not go back to our western roots of helping each other when in need.

We are all good, intelligent people who can do amazing things if we will work together.

In closing, please be passionate about your beliefs, but please base your beliefs on truths not on fear or on lies.

Thank you for your passion and for your efforts,
Dr. Lisa Jacobson
Equine veterinarian
Clyde Park, MT

[havocmom]

10. And, lots of vets in MT would disagree

if they thought it might not fall on deaf ears

Take care of the horses where you live. You wouldn't want US riding in and liberating them all, now would you? :rofl:

Really, without a humane way to dispose of critters that need to go down, they get put out and left to pretty much die slowly of starvation, often alone which must be hell for a herd animal. Too many hobbists from cities come out here, buy a couple acres and think they can support several horses on the postage stamp sized 'ranchette'. The horses are bored out of their minds, too often under fed, too often neglected. Still, they MIGHT be better off than the poor animals who have to pound pavement and deal with overcrowded areas where they are made to work in New York and other Eastern locations.

Your passion is swell, but don't expect that you can insist everyone agree with you. Especially when you are trying to impose you will in an area which is just a bit too real for your tender sensibilities.

Stay in the east. You would fade to dust in the harsh realities of the arid west.

[Solitaire]

11. to havocmom

Firstly, if Montana opens a slaughter house, it affects the rest of the country. My horse could be stolen and easily wind up in YOUR slaughter house.

Secondly, at least the EPA is aware of the ecological horror this can cause, they are attempting to save you from yourselves.

You see, horses get antibiotics and unlike cattle, can be slaughtered with those antibiotics still in their system. It's not profitable for the slaughter house to wait the alloted time, you see and the Belgian's want to make all the money they can, even if it's dangerous for human's to eat the meat. They are such a good bunch of folks, aren't they?

So, as I was saying, the antibiotics then kill the good microbes that kill all the harmful bacteria etc., that is going to wind up in YOUR water system.

Trust me, if this isn't super profitable for the Belgian's, it's not going to happen.

And also, it's not old and crippled horses that go to slaughter, it's the young healthy horses. Who wants to eat an old, sick horse?

But, the Belgian's think it's ok, so I guess you do too.

And one more thing, all the malarkey about abandoned horses is just that, malarkey.

Please educate yourself on the subject; there are lots of sites with horse slaughter information.

[havocmom]

13. If you think cattle do not have antibiotics at slaughter,

there is not any point in further discussion. You don't know enough.

[create.peace]

14. have you spent time near a cattle feed lot and/or packing plant??

if you want to get all upset about something, go there! if i were a meat eater, i wouldn't eat any beef from a steer i didn't know the owner. beef cattle are not only pumped full of antibiotics, they have bovine growth hormones. and they stand in and breath in the most putrid waste, because they are not grass fed, which doesn't produce such waste. dairy cattle may now be introduced into the food supply, without differentiation, and they have even more antibiotics.

my dad lost a horse to a tendon disease, and if he had let him live he would have been in pain and eventually unable to stand. he donated him to a wildlife savannah type preserve, where they humanely put him down, and he became food for true carnivore, the african lions. my dad loved his horse, and his horse now, who is a 27 yo pet now, just hangs out with other horses.

[Fruittree]

15. Do you read what you write?

If you did you never would have posted something so condescending and devoid of intelligence ...I guess in your case, thank goodness for the anonymity of the internet.

[Stargleamer]

12. Men oppress women all over the world

does that make it right?