Horse Slaughter Ban Up For More Debate

There is another effort to federally ban horse slaughter is on the horizon. Mary Kay Thatcher, American Farm Bureau Farm Policy Specialist says there are hearings are scheduled in the next couple of weeks before the House Judiciary committee.

The Chairman of that committee Mr. John Conyers, Jr. from Michigan has a bill to prevent horse slaughter. Thatcher says he moved a similar piece of legislation through that committee almost unamiously last year and very likely it will also happen this year.

Thatcher says there are 187 members of the House that have co-sponsored the bill, out of 435 representatives. But she says there isn't as much interest on the Senate side. Since the last time a horse slaughter ban was brought forward, Thatcher says it's become apparant that there are 100,000 American horses being transported annually to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

Especially in Mexico, Thatcher says they do not have the same kind of humane animal care, humane animal slaughter type provisions that the United States has, so a lot of those animals are not having a good experience down there. Thatcher believes there are people asking does this make sense, because we do have more humane slaughter regulations here, so maybe we should think twice about what we forced to make happen.

There are states that considering opening horse processing plants, but Thatcher says investors will wait to put forward any money to develop a processing plant with state legislatures and federal government very much involved in the issue.