Obama Signs Law legalizing Horse Slaughter in The U.S. By Stacey , Nov. 29, 2011..

Obama signs law legalizing horse slaughter in the US

November 29, 2011

by Stacey

PETITIONS AND ACTIONS BELOW
FROM: THE PERSIAN HORSE’S BLOG

BACKGROUND FROM: SCRIPPS NEWS

Last week while you weren’t looking Congress and the president did something the vast majority of Americans oppose. The president signed an omnibus-spending bill approved by Congress that makes it legal to slaughter horses in the United States once again. Polls show more than 70 percent of Americans oppose horse slaughter and few if any eat horse meat. Given the fact we are divided politically by a gap the size of the Grand Canyon, recognize that a 70 percent majority is an unheard of amount of backing.
But wait, it gets worse. The reintroduction of horse slaughter plants in the United States comes with a hefty price tag, much of which goes to line the pockets of people in other countries who own these dens of incalculable abuse. The way it works is that ever since 2005, there has been a section of the Agriculture appropriations bill that de-funds (to wit, bars the expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars on) a program for the USDA to inspect foreign-owned horse plants. Now that the de-funding law has been deleted, supporters of the grisly, completely inhumane process of horse slaughter will go back to lobbying Congress for millions of dollars annually to run the inspection program. Without inspection, it is illegal to transport horsemeat across state lines. Once they succeed, horse slaughter will resume here.
Let’s forget for the moment that candidate Barack Obama in 2008 pledged to keep the ban on horse slaughter permanent (another promise to voters reneged?) Let’s forget, too, that American horses are not bred or raised for consumption. Let’s forget that the few countries where horsemeat is consumed (France, Belgium and Japan among them) are ignoring the outright cruelty to horses that raises the hackles of right-thinking Americans. The simple question is: do we want our tax dollars spent to inspect horses who were slaughtered in incredibly cruel fashion (a bolt through the forehead that doesn’t kill them immediately) so foreign owners of slaughter plants can profit? In the midst of a recession when other crucial programs such as Medicare and education are suffering deep cuts, the answer is a resounding, “no.”
Supporters of horse slaughter say the reintroduction of slaughter plants in the U.S. will create jobs. An article in the Desert Independent in Blythe, Calif., this month noted, “Horse slaughter plants operating until 2007…never created a total of more than 178 jobs.” The kind of jobs they do create are of dubious economic value to the individuals who take them and to the communities where slaughter plants are located.
The Independent quotes Paula Bacon, former mayor of Kaufman, Texas, where a horse slaughter facility operated for years as saying, “Horse slaughter means very few, very low wage jobs, meaning workers and their families overtaxed local resources like the hospitals and government services. This so called business brought in virtually no tax revenues and local governments incurred substantial enforcement costs in trying to regulate these facilities. The standard of living dropped during the time horse slaughter facilities operated. Having a horse slaughter facility drove away good businesses.”
Studies have shown that when slaughter plants are opened in rural areas, violent crime quickly rises. Think about it. Horses are sometimes cut into pieces while still alive and screaming. What kind of person would accept the minimum wage to engage in this horrific behavior? The question answers itself.
Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., sponsored the de-funding amendment in the House version of the Agriculture Appropriations bill. He said he regrets voting for the overall bill (which did not include the de-funding language) but felt compelled to do so, to keep the government operating. He said the only alternative is to assure passage of a permanent ban on horse slaughter, which he and other compassionate members of Congress are working to do. Let’s wish them success.



PLEASE SIGN THESE TWO PETITIONS:
Overturn Obama’s Legalization of Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption
Slaughter/Consumption of Horses – Un-American!


IF YOU ARE AS DISGUSTED AND ENRAGED AS THE PERSIAN HORSE IS OVER THIS BLATANT and TREACHEROUS CORRUPTION, YOU MAY TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS:

• CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR MESSAGE OF DISGUST AND DISAPPOINTMENT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA.
• CLICK HERE TO SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. Type In Your Zip Code
• CLICK HERE TO SEND THE ABOVE ALERT TO HUNDREDS OF MEDIA OUTLETS. (Hint: send this link to the Media outlets: http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/65615 )
• CLICK HERE TO FIND FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES’ FAX NUMBERS
• CLICK HERE TO SEND FREE FAXES FROM YOUR COMPUTER. (Hint: Your Tax Dollars Pay for the Fax Paper),

UPDATE FROM CAPITAL HILL: Congress May Allow Governement Funding for Horse Slaughter.. Nov. 16, 2011 By:ASPCA.org

November 16, 2011

Update from Capitol Hill: Congress May Allow Government Funding for Horse Slaughterhouses

Guest blog post from Nancy Perry, Senior Vice President of ASPCA Government Relations.
In a heartbreaking development, we learned this week that Congress is abandoning an important piece of existing legislation that relates to horse slaughter. Since 2005, Congress has prevented the commercial slaughter of horses in the United States by blocking the use of federal money for horse meat inspections. This language was routinely included in the annual Agriculture Appropriations bill after the original amendment to defund horse slaughter inspections enjoyed bipartisan support and passed by large margins (269-158 in the House and 69-28 in the Senate). The 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill, which is currently being considered by Congress, does not include this provision.
This is distressing on two counts. First, at a time when Congress is cutting funds for education and other vital programs, it is outrageous that taxpayers would be asked to add $5 million to the budget for something as senseless as horse slaughter. Second, since Americans don’t eat horse meat, this action will only benefit foreign markets in Asia and Europe, where horse meat is considered a delicacy.
The members of the ASPCA Advocacy Brigade have worked hard contacting their legislators on this issue with calls, emails and letters of support. Congress is clearly ignoring the will of the American people if it allows our tax dollars to be used for this gratuitous cruelty.
Though this setback is unfortunate, it signals the need for us to redouble our efforts for a complete ban on horse slaughter. While the funding amendment protected America from the horrors of horse slaughter plants operating on our home soil (where, despite past USDA oversight, gross abuse and rampant cruelty were routine), it didn’t necessarily prevent horse slaughter—in fact, thousands of horses continue to be sent over our borders for this purpose every year. However, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 would not only ban horse slaughter in this country, but also ban the export of our horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter. I encourage everyone who cares about horses to contact their federal legislators to press for passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. You can do so by visiting www.aspca.org/AHSPA.
Those in favor of horse slaughter are celebrating Congress’s decision, and there’s already talk of opening horse slaughterhouses in the Northwest. Given the controversial nature of this issue, it may be tough to find investors unwise enough to take such a leap knowing that we’ll be working to defund horse slaughter again immediately.
It is now more important than ever that Congress hears from horse advocates who know how essential it is that we protect these majestic animals. To learn more about the issue of horse slaughter, please visit ASPCA.org.

Wild Horses and Hard Choices by Max Bearak... Oct. 11, 2011

OCTOBER 11, 2011, 8:01 AM

Wild Horses and Hard Choices

By MAX BEARAK

Monica Almeida/The New York Times Wild horses are driven by a helicopter toward a pen in the Nevada desert.

My first wild horse sighting came when a coworker and I, navigating a barely visible dirt road in our big Forest Service truck this summer, had just reached the crest of a ridge on our way to survey a remote wilderness area in eastern Nevada.

As I slowed down to admire the view, three black stallions bolted from a grove of pines barely 50 feet from us. Seconds later the horses were gone, leaving us to ponder their lives on the run and, later, to recount the thrill we had experienced.

I was lucky enough to see many more on the ranges of the Great Basin during my summer stint with the Forest Service. Well adapted to the basin’s wide open spaces, they would outrun our trucks and look back at us from afar, as if playing a game of tag in their natural playground.

Indeed, these horses aren’t fenced in. They run more or less freely in 10 Western states. Since leaving Nevada to return to school, I’ve had a recurring dream of one stallion in particular. With wind blowing through his mane as he raced beneath a clear blue summer sky, I fleetingly felt his independence. It’s abundantly clear to me why wild horses have come to embody freedom in the American imagination.

Some estimates say that there used to be millions of wild horses in North America. Horses were brought to the Americas initially by Spanish settlers, and to the West later as part of wagon trains and cavalry units in the United States Army, but all were domesticated.

Over the years, many horses were turned loose, either as a result of wars with Indian peoples or Mexicans, or because their owners had become too poor to take care of them. After the mechanization of agriculture, even more horses were released into the wild because they were no longer needed to pull plows and the like.

Yet, as more and more people arrived to settle the American West, loss of habitat drastically reduced wild horse populations. Significant droughts made the struggle for survival even harder by diminishing grazing areas in an already-shrinking natural environment.

By the 1960s, the total population had dropped to around 17,000. In 1971, Congress responded to growing public pressure by passing the Wild Horse and Burro Act, which reaffirmed that the animals were “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.”

The act granted ownership of all American wild horses to the federal government and established more than 300 herd management areas that are now administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The bureau has since been tasked with managing the wild horse populations and mitigating their effects on ecosystems.

Initially, with dangerously low numbers of horses, the bureau mainly sought to provide the horses with stable food and water supplies in the event of drought. Nowadays, the bureau vigorously pursues a policy of rounding up wild horses to keep their numbers at a level that prevents them from over-grazing and hogging water.

Since 1971, over 200,000 wild horses have been rounded up by the bureau. This year, they proposed to capture 6,000, a reduction from previous years. The bureau sets a target for roundups based on research on an area’s ecological carrying capacity.

For instance, in the herd management area nearest to Ely, Nev., where I worked this summer, they have determined that they should aim for a wild horse population between 810 and 1,695. At present, 3,700 horses roam the Ely district.

Ben Noyes, a wild horse and burro specialist working for the bureau in Ely, explained why ecosystems in the region can only handle so many horses. “Horses really do destroy the land sometimes,” he told me. “They muddy up spring water and contaminate it with waste, and when they eat grass they actually completely uproot it, leaving their ranges bare.”

Some would argue that wild horses are an invasive species in North America. While there were wild horses on the continent until the late Pleistocene era, about 10,000 years ago, they went extinct along with many other large mammals like the woolly mammoth. Then again, even the elk and mule deer, which are now abundant in the Great Basin region, were brought there by early white settlers for hunting and for aesthetic purposes.

In such an “unnatural” landscape, those who work with wild horses are split on how to interpret their place in the ecosystem.
What is certain is that because of the strain that wild horses put on those ecosystems and because their habitat is so limited, most are skinny and undernourished. Mr. Noyes says that seeing horses in that condition motivated him to get involved in their management.

“For me, it’s not just my job, it’s my life,” he said. “I love to see them healthy and in great shape, just as I like to see other animals in good shape in a healthy ecosystem. You don’t want to see them suffer, you don’t want to see them fight with each other.’

On the other hand, some animal welfare activists argue that the bureau’s roundups are not in the best interest of the horses or the ecosystem. Most of the activists contend that the bureau rounds up far too many horses and caters to vested interests in livestock grazing and to landowners who see the horses as pests.

The bureau has in turn struggled to assure activists that it now has the horses’ interests at heart.

Early on, in a memorandum written when the Wild Horse and Burro Act was passed in the early 70s, Jeff Sirmon, a deputy regional forester, encouraged bureau employees to “take a more positive attitude” toward wild horses. Region-wide, he acknowledged then, “practically all of our people freely express the idea that these animals are a problem and are unwanted. Everyone hopes they will die off from loco-weed poisoning, or the cougars will kill them off, or they will simply migrate somewhere else.”

Attitudes have certainly changed, and the bureau does not want wild horses to simply disappear or die off.

And what does a roundup look like?

Wild horses are located on the range by helicopter. Once they are found, the helicopter acts as a kind of sheep dog. It swoops low and chases the horses toward a predetermined location where a “trap site” has already been set up.

A trained horse known as a Judas horse runs into the trap site, leading the wild horses in with him. Often the wild horses will have run from the helicopter for miles and miles, in great heat, and some do die in the process from exhaustion or heat.

Most don’t, however, and the rest are loaded from the trap site into mobile corrals and taken to temporary holding sites. Very few horses escape the helicopter, but when they do, the activists who gather at the trap sites to protest the roundups give a hearty cheer.

At the temporary holding sites, the horses are sorted by age, sex and state of health after undergoing basic examinations. Then they are sent to short-term holding facilities where they get more vigorous health examinations and receive vaccinations. The studs (adult male horses) are castrated. This is all part of the process of making wild horses adoptable so that the public can take advantage of the roundups.

Not all horses are adoptable. Some are very sick, some are too old, and some seem completely untrainable. In those cases, the horses are transferred to specific pastures owned by the bureau for an easy retirement. The adoptable horses will typically end up at county and state fairgrounds or other auction events where the public can buy them from the bureau. A standard horse goes for $125.

The horses are cheap because they’re not well bred and are very hard to train. Debbie Collins, the coordinator of the information center for the bureau’s Wild Horse and Burro Program, says the process requires lots of patience. “They’re not used to someone coming out with a bucket of feed,” she said, “and they’ve never had a stall, or really any contact with humans.”

Ms. Collins says that some adopters prefer wild horses nonetheless because it’s like starting with a clean slate. The training takes creativity: apparently some adopters have their horses listen to the radio during the day to get them accustomed to human voices.

Most adopted wild horses will end up in Oklahoma, Kansas or other Central Plains states. Yet extreme drought in that region this year has sharply reduced the numbers adopted. And in some areas furthest to the east, there’s been lots of flooding.“On top of the economic slowdown, we’ve had a lot of mother nature issues this year,” Ms. Collins said.

Given that the weather has been so unpredictable lately and an economic turnaround has not materialized, the bureau has started looking at new methods for managing free-roaming wild horse populations beyond the adoption program. In 2009, 500 female wild horses were given fertility control treatments before being released back into the wild. This year and the next, they hope to treat 2,000 annually.

Wild horses are an instructive example of how the protection of both animal welfare and ecosystems, which you would think go hand in hand, requires compromises.

Who would have thought that the government would be capturing and sterilizing an animal that represents something fundamental to the nation’s heritage? But there you have it.

Secret Documents Reveal BLM Secret Plan to Destroy Wild Horses....

BS Ranch Perspective:

Can you believe that they are going to still try to Destroy the Wild Horses, when there has been a strict fight against such an act! The laws have been made that no horses will be slaughtered in the United States or Transported to another country for Destruction! I cannot believe that a Government Agency, one whom I am sure had fought for this law, has swooped this low as to ignore the law and attempted or made plans even to destroy the American Wild Mustang!

I believe that the men and or Woman that were involved in this should be Slaughtered instead of the Wild Mustang!

BS Ranch

PRESS RELEASE
June 11, 2009- for immediate release


Documents Reveal BLM Secret Plan to Destroy Wild Horses

Documents obtained from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) via the Freedom of Information Act by a Phoenix-based non-profit, The Conquistador Program, reveal shocking and detailed plans to destroy healthy wild horses in government holding facilities as well as those still remaining in the wild on public lands.

BLM employees as well as a USDA veterinarian held weekly "Implementation Team" meetings beginning in July of 2008 in which they discussed and developed strategies aimed at ridding BLM of thousands of mustangs. In October they completed a 68 page document entitled "Alternative Management Options". Tactics included in this document are reminiscent of those used to wipe out Native American tribes in the 1800s.

The BLM team created scenarios for killing mustangs using barbiturates, gun shots, or captive bolts. Bodies would be disposed of through rendering, burial or incineration. They discussed killing 1200-2000 wild horses per year. The document states that "the general public would be prohibited from viewing euthanasia." Additionally, the Team felt that "increased support from public relations and management staff would also be needed to insulate those doing the actual work from the public, media and Congressional scrutiny/criticism."

"Minutes from these meetings as well as the Draft Plan reveal what amounts to 'the final solution' for the American mustang," states Ginger Kathrens, filmmaker and Volunteer Executive Director of The Cloud Foundation. "Despite a huge outcry from the American public last year regarding BLM plans to kill wild horses in holding, the agency is still pressing forward with a plan to destroy our American mustangs both on and off the range."

Division Chief of the Wild Horse and Burro Program Don Glenn told The Cloud Foundation that "no decision has been made to move forward on a large scale with this plan, yet."

BLM meeting minutes speak for themselves. "Security at facilities and at gathers would need to be increased to combat eco-terrorism. Having the people that are willing to put down healthy horses at gather sites could be a problem. Having vets putting down healthy horses at preparation facility[ies] could also be a problem." Meeting minutes reveal the psychological toll that employees would pay—"have counseling for employees and contractors that have to euthanize the healthy horses because it is very stressful."

The report created an option in which wild horses of all ages could be sold "without limitation". In other words, horses could be sold directly to killer buyers in unchecked numbers. The Team admitted that "some wild horses will go to slaughter".

"Once they are gone, they're gone" says Karen Sussman, President of the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs and Burros. "To lose this incomparable species would be a travesty."

Team Members formulated ways in which they could circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act, asking "How many (wild horses) could be euthanized during a gather (roundup) without having NEPA?" BLM discussed ways to circumvent the federal carcass disposal law (43 CFR 4730.2). Conversations included how many wild horses could be rendered at the Reno Rendering plant or "disposed of in pits". The Team concluded that "there will not be large numbers of horses euthanized during gathers or in the field. This is due to state environmental laws."

Recommendations include the creation of gelding herds, and sterilization of mares to create non-reproductive herds in the wild in place of natural herds. The team recommended changing the sex ratio from the normal 50% males and 50% females to 70% males and 30% females. Then the experimental two-year infertility drug, PZP-22, would be given to all mares that are returned to the wild. Plans call for rounding up the wild horses every two years to re-administer the drug.

"Mares on the drug will cycle monthly and, with the altered sex ratio, the social chaos will be dangerous and on-going," Kathrens explains. "Any semblance of normal wild horse society will be completely destroyed."

Kathrens has spent 15 years in the wild documenting mustang behavior for her PBS television documentaries which chronicle the life story of Cloud, the now famous pale palomino stallion she has filmed since birth. "Even Cloud and his little herd in Montana are in serious danger if BLM implements these options," she continues. "The BLM plans a massive round up in Cloud's herd beginning August 30, 2009."

The BLM will not guarantee that Cloud and his family will remain free.



The BLM documents referred to above and photos of wild horses are available from The Cloud Foundation.

The Cloud Foundation, Inc.
107 South 7th St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80905
719-633-3842
719-633-3896 (fax)
info@thecloudfoundation.org
www.thecloudfoundation.org