Ban On Horse Slaughter Lifted by 10th Circuit Court-Stage is Set for The Obama Administration’s Wholesale Slaughter of Wild Herds

Posted by: Allison Martinez Posted date: December 19, 2013




Barack Obama has broken yet another campaign promise. This one is on the slaughter of horses.

When asked specifically during the campaign, “Will you support legislation …to institute a permanent ban on horse slaughter and exports of horses for human consumption“, Barack Obama gave an unqualified “Yes“.
Obama even repeated his promise in 2013 stating he had proposed provisions to stop horse slaughter. Despite leaving out the defunding provisions in 2011, animal rights groups must have believed him.
Remember, this is the guy who said if you like your plan, you can keep it.
His administration took the lead on removing the defunding provisions on slaughter on the USDA in 2011, even though animal rights activist blame it on Congress. Well, Obama’s DOJ lent their support to the slaughter house industry in the court action. That’s right, the US DOJ backed the slaughter-house industry on this one.
Photo of Wild Horse Herds in captivity by the USDA
by Carol Walker

So it is hardly surprising that on December 17th is the National Day of the Horse, was the day that 1oth Circuit Court decided to lift the ban on slaughtering horses. This court order paves the way for the federal government to commence the slaughter of wild herds held captive for meat export by the year’s end.
Barack Obama– the slaughter of horses.
Horse slaughter for commercial meat was banned in 2007. The Obama Administrations has been fighting hard to re-institute the practice, despite his campaign promise to work toward making the Bush era ban permanent. In 2011, President Obama reauthorized the U.S.D.A. to reopen its slaughterhouse and to renew inspections. However, the first permits were not issued until the summer of 2012. A temporary ban was won in court by horse activists, but that ban was lifted by the 10th Circuit Court’s decision in Denver yesterday. Barack Obama’s DOJ fought for opening the slaughter houses.
Blair Dunn, attorney for the slaughterhouse group told USA Today that the businesses plan on re-opening quickly.
“They are getting ready to go as quickly as they can. It shouldn’t take too long. Not more than two weeks.”
Over half of the wild horses in the United States are in USDA detention facilities at the present time. Given the administration’s refusal to turn over the herds and their push to re-open the slaughter houses, there is really only one conclusions to draw: The Obama Administration plans to sell the meat from wild herds on the overseas market.
At the present time, most of the wild horses herds in the United States are in detention facilities owned by the U.S.D.A. While many people, such as Madeleine Pickens have offered to take all the horses in captivity from the government for release on their own lands, the government refuses to turn them over, claiming it would be too expensive. Yet Pickens has repeatedly born that expense in other instances, and has offered to do so again.
But Barack Obama is more a courtesan of global interests than American ones. The horse issue lays this naked reality for all to see, for the Administration is clearly acting at the behest of global businesses on this issue.
Horse meat is primarily an export item. Since the ban has been in place, horses are exported live and slaughtered in Canada and Mexico. In this century, there has been limited funding from Congress for slaughter. USDA statistics show that between 1989 to 1990, almost 2 million horses were slaughtered for meat in the United States. During the Clinton years, the United States led the world in horse meat exports, second only to Canada and Mexico. Japan had started cultivating the industry in their northern provinces, during the Bush years, but the industry came to a halt due to the Fukushima disaster. This apparently provided impetus for the Obama Administration to regenerate the industry in the United States.
Unlike the Clinton Administration, the Bush administration did not particularly smile upon the industry. Resources in the U.S.D.A. were gradually moved out of that area and the numbers slaughtered trickled relative to the Clinton era numbers. Prior to the ban on horse slaughter, the U.S.D.A. numbers for U.S. horse slaughter was less than 1/4 the number during the Clinton years.
Actor and noted animal rights activist Robert Redford released the following statement in regard to the court’s decision.
“There is no place in America for a domestic or foreign-driven horse slaughter industry. We are not, nor have we ever been a horse-eating culture….. I feel we are better served bringing to scale these solutions rather than going the route of the cruel and bloody business of roundups, neglect, and transportation to killing floors,”
Our tax dollars are being used to round-up wild herds, hold them captive, slaughter them, inspect the meat. This represents a huge subsidy foreign food producers. The US will never recoup the revenue from the sale of this meat. Vicki Tobin, vice president of the Equine Welfare Alliance stated earlier,
It is outrageous that American taxpayers would be required to subsidize foreign owned businesses that Americans oppose and that produces meat from animals that are not raised for food“.
Polls show that over 70% of all Americans oppose the slaughter of horses. It seems to be one of the few thing most Americans agree upon.
Horse slaughter operations are of dubious economic value. While horse slaughter houses operated in California, they only generated 178 jobs, and those were low wage jobs. The inspection process by the U.S.D.A. is costly, and there additional costs of these facilities incurred locally. The cost is born by federal, state, and local government. The industry generates little local revenue for the host community and often creates bigger problems for communities engaged in that type of economic activity. One city that was a boom town for slaughter houses was Kaufman, Texas, actually grew when the slaughter houses were outlawed. Paula Bacon, former mayor of Kaufman, Texas stated,
“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.”
In 2004 Dallas Crown, Inc., for example, which operated a horse slaughter facility in Kaufman, Texas until 2007, paid $5 in federal income tax on $12 million in sales. Dallas Crown, Inc. was owned by Chevidico, Belgium multinational. Dallas Crown paid no sales tax because its products, horse meat, are sold and consumed in foreign countries. The City of Kaufman spent enormous legal resources trying to get Dallas Crown to clean up the blood running down the streets and gullies.
Are these are the new shovel ready jobs in the high tech green energy sector that Barack Obama promised?
Pro-slaughter activists claim that prior to the ban, horses were exported live for slaughter in other countries. The ban simply sent these jobs overseas. While this is true, it also forced the consuming nation to undertake their own inspection process. By slaughtering in the US, American taxpayers fund the inspection process with no benefit to them. This is simply big government for the sake of big government.
The largest horse slaughter facility is in Roswell, New Mexico.



Allison Martinez

Allison Martinez writes as the “Arctic Conservative” lives in northern Alaska. An economist by training, AC lives as an economic refugee on the edge of the country.
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