Many horses bought in Arizona are sent to meat processing plants in Mexico despite the recent lifting of a ban on horse slaughtering in the United States. The ban was lifted to stop horses from being killed after grueling journeys across the border.
Tucson 2012
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And yet all you see, even here in this video is young, fat, healthy horses… Going to slaughter.. The KB’s, and the Slaughterhouses, only want healthy, young and fat horses.. The infirm, and emaciated ones, either get dumped (wondering where all these supposedly abandoned horses are coming from?))) and or left in the feedlots..
KB’s are not your upstanding citizens just helping a fella out!! Look again, google these drivers names… A large sector of them are ex felons… have serous outstanding violations up into the 100′s of thousands, and somehow they are still driving?.. See for yourselves,… Warning very distrubing.. but very educational… http://rtfitchauthor.com/2011/11/12/video-confessions-of-a-horse-slaughter-kill-buyer/
Brenda, you are SO right! The KBs are thugs who treat horses with unbelievable cruelty. They watch the ads and misrepresent themselves to sellers who would never knowingly sell their horse for slaughter.
Slaughter plants won’t even accept old, sick, skinny horses! These plants are in the FOOD business, NOT disposal places for dumping horses.
And yes indeed, they DO dump the ones they think are unacceptable. At the border between Mexico and the US, hundreds of horses that are refused by the slaughter plants are left to live or die. Some are even left in feed lots without food or water.
These guys are in it for PROFIT and nothing else!
If this video upsets you than start calling your political representatives, start writing letters to the editor, start learning about how cruel this industry is. Think about the kill buyers responses to the questions, “hit them up side the head” violent answer from a violent man. Imagine how he treats the horses he buys.
“No horses are being slaughtered for human consumption in the United States?” That doesn’t explain what is happening in Florida, at the very least. Horses stolen, obtained under false pretenses, or slaughtered right in their own stalls and their meat sold at street festivals or exported to the Caribbean.
If these kill buyers are doing society such a favour, why are they hiding out, lying, being secretive, preparing fraudulent paperwork, and promising sellers that they will “find a good home” for the horse? Beau Jacques, One of over 100 horses sent to slaughter by the deceptive Kelsey Lefever, acknowledged by his former owner as having received bute, penicillin, and naproxin in the days before he was loaded on a slaugher-bound truck to Canada. What did his paperwork say? Did it acknowledge that he received these drugs, some utterly prohibited from entering the food chain, before he was slaughtered for food?
How is a “favor” to the horse to send them to slaughter, to be stuffed in a transport trailer with the other horses this kill buyer bought. There are many programs out there to help horse people and sometimes it goes back to helping your neighbor out. Also when the reporter stated that the skinny and infirm go to the kill buyer that is untrue instead look to the report that was done about the abandoned horses in Texas. It was the Kill Buyer abandoning them because they could not be sent to Mexico because they were to skinny or would not pass inspection.
The entire slaughter industry is rife with collusion, inhumanity and fraud. The Canadian Horse Defence Coalition (CHDC) released a report Pasture to Plate: The True Cost of Canada’s Horsemeat Industry in December of 2011 based on videos and photos taken at Les Viandes de la Petite-Nation slaughter house in Quebec. In this report, they audited 62 EID documents and not one of these EIDs were given a pass. The EIDs showed that there is major fraudulence in the Canadian system of tracking slaughter horses raising alarm from a food safety standpoint. As well as major omissions on these forms, there were horses matched to the wrong EIDs, illegible owners information, scanty descriptions of horses, and most alarmingly collusion between the owner and/or kill buyer and/or the auction house indicating not one of the horses slaughtered were given any drugs within the prescribed time period. This was the 4th slaughter house the CHDC investigated. Canadian laws were broken in all the investigations – and yet, not one charge has been laid by the CFIA (the overseeing body The Canadian Food Inspection Agency) since 2008. In Canada, we have a Private Members’ Bill, C-322, to stop horse slaughter. The majority of Canadians do not support this predatory industry (and no, contrary to what some think, horse meat is not a staple of Canadians’ diet). The U.S. and Canada must work together to put an end to this. For more information on the Canadian side, go to the CHDC web at http://www.defendhorsescanada.org.
Im so sorry for the horses, and stupid talk like these fat belly men, that need to get a real job, doesnt do any good, i have no faith in our president that could help.
Actually the lead into the video is incorrect. On November 18th, the language that excluded USDA funding from horse meat inspections was removed from the AG Bill. There was never a BAN on horse slaughter as you can (in most states) still slaughter your own horse and share the meat with friends or family. But you are NOT allowed to sell horse meat which has not been inspected. S.1176 and H.R. 2966 are two bills that are gaining momentum! One will BAN domestic and wild horse slaughter in clear, open language. The other will BAN TRANSPORT to slaughter. These two bill are history changing bills. Share this information. Post it on FB, Twitter, Google, and your individual pages for Senators and House Reps. As long as slaughter is available people will continue to use it as a trash can for their irresponsible mind set and breeding practices.
This video missed out on some important things. It seemed awfully pro-slaughter to me.. Why not mention the toxicity of horse meat? Or how the anti-slaughter groups are rallying to get the horse numbers under control by offering gelding and euthanasia clinics? It’s all about cleaning up other people’s messes. Due to lack of responsibility.
If you love equines, care for them or admire their spirit and honor their contribution to our society’s please join the fight to end the brutality they face when entering the slaughter pipeline. In America, demand your Senators sign S1176 and your Congressman sign HR2966. Then speak up and against the industry. We do not eat horses or mules or burros. They were/are our feet when we could no longer walk, the back when we were too weak to carry our supplies. They bow their head to us. We as the human race must protect the animals from those who care not for their sacrifice. Please stand now. Horses are dying and being butchered right now.
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but we were sending thousands of horses to Mexico and Canada for slaughter all the while the plants were operating here. The plants that were here, all the ones in Canada and the ones in Mexico where most of our horses go are owned by the very same people – The European Union. The rules are exactly the same as those in our domestic plants. As for USDA “regulation,” go to http://kaufmanzoning.net and view the 900 pictures the USDA took of violations at Beltex in Ft. Worth, TX but never did anything about. They are horrific!
Not only was slaughter no more humane here than in Canada and Mexico, the trip is not necessarily longer. The US is a huge piece of real estate and we only had THREE plants in the entire country – one in Illinois and two in North Central/Central Texas. There are any number of states that are much closer to Canada and even Mexico than to Illinois and Central Texas.Check a map! Besides, as I said, thousands of horses were already going to Canada and Mexico, and I didn’t read any complaints about it then. This is pro-slaughter propaganda and nothing else.
Horse slaughter is horrendous no matter what country it’s in.
Bravo, Samantha Elizabeth Esquivel, for handling this topic, which the mainstream media ignores (or covers poorly) and the public doesn’t understand. Keep on looking into it and reporting back: it’s a complex subject, and NYT readers deserve to know the truth about it.
If you believe that slaughter in the US would be well regulated and humane, I have a bidge to sell you but don’t take my work for it . This article will tell you more http://horsebackmagazine.com/hb/archives/13804
Excerpt : The highest ranking federal veterinarian with jurisdiction over the controversial C-4 holding pens at Presidio, Texas told Horseback Online Thursday that he has never held a Coggins certificate from horses at the facility in his hands. Moreover, he says he was under orders to ignore the place.
and
Late last year, more than 60 horses were seized from the pens in various stages of starvation, dehydration, and illness. Several died, and a dumping ground of horse carcasses was discovered in a flash flood prone creek that runs behind the pens and empties into the Rio Grande River.
And if you want to see what horse slaughter in the US looked like , go here
http://kaufmanzoning.net
At ~2:49 in this site’s video, http://tucson12.nytimes-institute.com/14/horse-for-slaughter/ you can clearly see that the horse in the kill box is shot in the head once, and shot a second time before he falls. I believe that this video is from a Canadian plant several years ago. The shot is meant to stun, not kill, the horse. The heart should continue beating in order to prevent the tissues/meat from rotting.
US regulations via the 1959 Humane Slaughter Act require that an animal is to be stunned with a single blow, only. If anyone thinks that the horse slaughter industry can be humane because of the number of gunshots used, then they’re missing the mark. This horrific industry now threatens to run a plant on US soil and whether that occurs or not, US horses will continue to ship long distances in deadly transport trucks, wherever they off-load.
Canada slaughtered 89,160 horses in 2011, many being US horses. Whether our horses are slaughtered in US, Canadian, or Mexican plants, it’s up to Americans to stop tolerating this vicious brutality. That’s what we’re doing: tolerating slaughter. Get involved, add your voice, show your passion. Demand that Washington pass S1176/HR2966, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011.
Find your legislators at http://www.votesmart.org/
Remind President Obama that 70% of Americans do NOT want their horses slaughtered, IN or OUT of the United States, and they do NOT want their horses to be eaten. Remind President Obama that 70% of Americans makes up a LOT of votes …..
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“The ban was lifted to stop horses from being killed after grueling journeys across the border”??? so it’s okay to kill them gruesomely within our borders? NO. Almost 80% of Americans oppose horse slaughter and this fight is not over.
horses are NOT food animals, here. We need to STOP the slaughter!!!!!!!!