Horse Slaughter as a Model

GRASPING AT BIG-TICKET STRAWS

I feel like a guy in a barracks where alarm clocks are going off all over the place but no one wakes up, much less shuts them off. Everyone has buried their head under their pillow and refuses to acknowledge any alarms at all. The only excuse I can imagine for all this is that, like children in a dark room after watching a scary movie, all those heads are buried because they are afraid of what they will discover if they open their eyes.

Page A6 of the Sunday paper reports the following propaganda with all the usual suspects and the “human interest” and calls for “more” federal legislation, more federal regulation, and more submission to radical agendas by decreeing that any remaining notion of animal ownership is merely a chimera allowed by benevolent dictators in Washington. The reporting is as slanted as the Tower in Pisa and the cast of barbarians (the correct term) is replete with “Courtneys” and “volunteers” and “Rescue Leagues”, etc., etc. to relax us and even make us feel sorry for all those horses and their “guardians”, “out there”.

VIRGINIA – Rising hay prices force owners to give up horses.
Richmond (AP) - Hay prices, which have doubled because of the drought, have left some horse owners unable to properly care for their animals”. It goes on to tell us that an Equine Rescue League is taking in horses “hundreds of pounds under” (what they term) “their ideal weight.” The accompanying picture of the kindly appearing and bushy haired lady “volunteer” holding hay by a little colt is heart rending to say the least. We are told hay may go to $20 per bale and that “people aren’t buying horses this year.” The Rescue outfit’s “Regional Director” informs us that “ there really is no excuse for a skinny horse”. However, the real propaganda lie-of-the-day is the following, “Some desperate owners are resorting to slaughter. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that tens of thousands of horses are being transported to Mexico and Canada. The group is working with other organizations to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act which would prohibit the transport, purchase or donation of any horse to be slaughtered for human consumption”. BONG, BONG, BONG!

So the drought is responsible for some (owners?) being “unable to properly care for (their?) animals”? (Note to media tinker belles, next time tie in “global warming” to the “drought” to increase the blame for improper “care” of animals and further grow government. I’ll wager your kudos and readership will increase several-fold.) Who dictates “proper care”? Answer: just as with medical experiments and pets and marine mammals and birds etc., the “Rescue Leagues” and Animal Welfare Committees and Animal Welfare “Officers” and bureaucrats and politicians. The fact that you (supposedly) “own” an old horse, a sick horse, or a lame horse or any sort of a non-healthy horse is your tough luck.

Like all other environmental and animal rights agendas, we are told we are only seeing “the tip of the iceberg” and only government can “solve” the problem. Like pets taken into shelters, they are supposed to be placed “in permanent homes”. But, if the soccer moms and farm families and rural homes can’t afford $20 per bale hay; where are such homes?

All this however, is just the whipped cream all over the poison beneath. The papers (liberal or conservative, it matters not anymore) hide the real reasons for the problem while touting more of the same “crapola” by the same groups that caused the problem in the first place to only make matters worse.

Last spring we all chirped about the “new” federal law that put the horse slaughter business out of business throughout the US and thereby “saved” Misty and Flicka et al. So today how can this paper fail to mention this fact (NO PLACE to dispose of unwanted horses) and then even have the audacity to publish “Some desperate owners are resorting to slaughter”? What are they doing, shooting the horse and dragging it into the barn to be home butchered like a deer to be consumed or fed to the dog? Paying enormous amounts to bury the horse in the few jurisdictions that would allow it anyway? Of course not! Many who have an undesirable horse that no one wants have “given” them to Rescue Leagues (thereby creating a “need” for “more” government involvement, funding, authority, etc.) while others have sold them to Canadians or Mexicans where (GASP!) horse slaughter is a reasonable alternative for human consumption as far away as Europe or animal feed production for pets, mink, etc.

So the “new” federal law last spring left a “loophole” and now anyone against double jeopardy and prison and public groveling to “save” horses (like Michael Vick) is not going to get reelected and/or fired and/or made into an outcast as the case may be. Support the new law to make it illegal to sell a horse anywhere to anyone without a “permit” or “permission” or “justification”(You will have to “prove” it won’t be “slaughtered” at some future date) or you will be destroyed. You must provide “proper care” for your horse until death do you part (remembering that “there is no excuse for a skinny horse” and horses live for many years) under the watchful eyes of the “Rescuers” and “Veterinarians” and “Wardens” and, as my sainted mother would say, every SOB from hell to breakfast.

Now I know few of my readers are horse folks but it is the rest of you I am trying to reach. Federal horse slaughter laws are no more just, proper, legal, or Constitutional than Federal cockfighting laws or Federal dogfighting laws: these are matters for State and Local governments and the individual communities that compose their societies. All you animal “owners”, users, and those who benefit from animals in the USA stop and think: “they” just pass a law and suddenly you lose your rights and traditions and all the benefits of the animals that benefit you. Busybody “experts and do-gooders” take charge of your horses and then, because you have no one to sell to during a “drought” (i.e. a slaughter house) the problem gets worse. New laws forbidding (essentially) sale to foreigners and submission to laws and regulations written and enforced by zealous socialists simply create the “need” for more laws and money and government power. Soon, only the rich will have horses, as is happening with so many other things.

Consider:

Hunters – As lead bullets are (unjustifiably) forbidden and dogs are prohibited and hunting license requirements become impossible to meet; hunting will easily be banned like horse slaughter. Then of course foreign hunting will have to be banned for all the “reasons” “we” banned hunting here. Importation of game (like the exportation of horses) will have to be banned as well. More state and Federal agencies will be needed to “stop all the smuggling and gambling and illegal aliens and drug use” (this is the cockfighting vilification twaddle loosely applied) that will be alleged to have sprung up around illegal hunting.

Pet (Owners?/Guardians?/whatever) – When “puppy mills” are “stamped out” (this, believe it or not, DOES include you AKC types) to reduce the “pet overpopulation” and shelters and the do-gooders (the only source for “pets”) are granted more power to dictate what you must do forever with the sterilized puppy you are granted (with what, a title?, an easement?, temporary guardianship?, foster care?) and may not have more than one of: the same scenario will occur. People with more than ONE puppy like Chinese parents with more than one child will be hunted down like the enemies of the people in some science fiction novel. Importation and exportation will become big “problems”. More laws, more power to government, more bureaucrats, more training (see the “smuggling, gambling, etc” stuff above that was used for cockfighting) will be needed.

Fishermen – When inhumane treatment of fish (nets, hooks, etc.) is accepted (like the banning of hunting) as justification to ban fishing; and when the State fish and wildlife agencies suddenly pull off their disguises in some phone booth to display their “Federal agency uniforms advocating ‘ecosystems’ and ‘environmental and animal love-worship’: the scenarios above will repeat. Foreign fishing products will have to be banned because they don’t meet “our” standards. Americans will “have” to be forbidden to go to any foreign country to fish or to import any fish they got somewhere else. The costs will be enormous but it is all we can do to “save fish”.

Fur Users – When we prohibit trapping (what’s the difference if you can just forbid horse slaughter?) we will have to prohibit the possession of fur. Law enforcement will whine about how “you can’t tell the difference from ‘pre-Act’ fur” and there will no doubt be “smuggling, drugs, etc., etc.”, (see cockfighting above) so we will need more laws and more bureaucrats and more money and more power. Why not Embargo or Blockade those nations that refuse to ban furs or horse slaughter or fishing or hunting? Nah, that would never happen, I was just getting carried away. They would never have that much power; they would never go that far: would they??

Sick Folks And Anyone Who May Get Sick – Oh forget it you are already done for. Last week it was reported that “clinical testing” by drug companies (ssshhhh, that is really laboratory testing mainly with animals) is being shipped out of the country to India and China (where our toys are made). This is really BECAUSE of the 30 year-old Animal Welfare Act which of course goes unmentioned in the papers (like the Horse Slaughter Law went unmentioned in today’s article) as we moan about losing this industry and worry about Chinese reliability. Not to worry though, the do-gooders and politicians and bureaucrats have got a new law drafted (the Pet Animal Welfare Act, i.e. “PAWS” isn’t that just a “darling” acronym) that will do for pets what was done for the use of animals from primates and rabbits to rats and mice in the US by the Animal Welfare Act, that is destroy it and the untold human benefits it created and could have created. But, what the heck, there are “too many people” in places like Africa and South America and Asia anyway and it is too “expensive” to keep the old folks alive or help the very young whom we declare won’t live a “quality life”.

I could detail more such groups and what this clearly shows lies ahead for them but I have work to do. So let’s hear it for all the “too busy” animal owners and users and their organizations that go along to get along. Let’s hear it also the rescuers and the veterinarians and all those who believe that their values and ideas must be forced on everyone else whether they like it or not. Let’s hear it for the politicians that will get reelected and all those bureaucrats that get raises and bonuses and increased pensions. Let’s hear it for all those profiting from destroying the rights of others whether this is a Republic with guaranteed rights or not. Like the aging abortion supporter that learns that a grandchild was aborted; their belief about how such things will never affect them is both wrong and a far more serious mistake than they can ever imagine.

Jim Beers
16 December 2007
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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.