GAO to Study Horse Slaughter Closure

U.S. Government to Study Impact of Horse Slaughter Industry Closure
A new law upholds the ban on American horse slaughter and orders an examination of horse welfare.

October 29, 2009

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) will soon be studying the impact of the closure of American equine slaughterhouses. The last American slaughterhouse was closed in 2007.

On October 21, the president signed the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 (H.R.2997). The primary purpose of the bill is to designate funding for The United States Department of Agriculture and related organizations. The bill, now Public Law 111-80, contains some important points related to horse welfare.

Section 744 continues the prohibition of USDA spending on inspection of horsemeat in the United States. Though there are currently no equine slaughterhouses in the country, this provision would apply if a company moves forward on constructing a new slaughter plant. When American slaughterhouses were operational, the primary market for the product was in parts of Europe and Japan, where horsemeat is an ingredient in some local specialty dishes.

Earlier this year, a Montana law sponsored by Republican Representative Ed Butcher cleared the way for the construction of an equine slaughterhouse in that state. He is currently seeking Chinese investors to operate the facility, though it is uncertain how the meat will be sold legally without USDA inspection as that inspection is required of all meat produced in the United States, regardless of where it is sold.

Furthermore, new European Union laws require any horse sold for human consumption to be identified as "intended for slaughter." This means they must not have been treated with any chemicals, such as dewormers or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or undergo a 180-day quarantine. The new EU law is expected to impact the market for American horses as meat animals.

One of the primary arguments of the pro-slaughter movement is that the closure of horse slaughter plants in the United States has directly contributed toward increased neglect and abandonment of American horses. A senate report accompanying H.R. 2997 directs the GAO to conduct a study on the current state of horse welfare in America as it relates to the end of the domestic slaughter industry. The study will specifically examine how horse welfare, horse rescue organizations, farm industry income, and overall horse sales, imports and exports have been affected by the slaughterhouse closures.

Results of this study are expected by March of 2010.

Alabama "Equine Producers" Anxious to Kill Productions

"Can't Beat Our Meat,.well, NOT YET, anyways."



The Alabama Farmers Federation Equine Producers Division Works to Bring Back Horse Slaughter in USA

Composed of horse "producers" and owners from throughout the state, the Equine Division represents these "producers" on a national, state and local level with committees in more than 40 Alabama counties.

Equine producers and owners who make up these committees come together at the local level and develop policies and program ideas to address their needs and concerns. Those policies are then discussed at the state level and may be transformed into state and national initiatives by the organization

Faces of your "Product" torn from their skulls, hearts still beating, America DOES NOT WANT your "product!"













and something for you to sit and spin on, while you think about that,...greedy ba$T@Rd$;





Click on title above to go to the "Alabama Equine Producers" website (Geeze, they dont even call it "breeding" anymore,...just like slaughter isnt slaughter anymore, the pro-slaughters renamed it "harvesting,"...trying to sanitize the un-necessary evil of horse slaughter ; Talk about "spin!" http://www.alfafarmers.org/commodities/equine.phtml

Another Florida Horse Slaughtered for Meat

November 1, 2009
Horse found slaughtered for meat
The slaughter of a horse in Florida is the latest indication of rising demand for black market horse meat for human consumption, an animal rights advocate said.

The horse's carcass was found by the side of a road. It is the 21st reported incident of this kind, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, reported Sunday.

"It was a typical slaughter," Richard Couto, an investigator with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said. "This was done by pros."

Miami-Dade police have arrested four men in connection with previous cases of horse slaughter but black market demand for horse meat is growing, as is horse theft, the newspaper said.

"There are so many people doing this," Couto said. "It is profitable and there is a high demand, and the problem is not going away soon."

Florida lawmakers are considering a resolution urging increased criminal penalties for horse slaughter and calling for the suspension or revocation of licenses for restaurants, stores or businesses that sell horse meat illegally.

http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewContent.act?clipid=391105934&mode=cnc&tag=3.5981%3Ficx_id%3D19301257117974

Heart of Horses

Click on title above to go to "South Pacific Services," a Trading Company in Denmark. Could these be American wild horse hearts?

International Directory of Horsemeat Sellers

Including SMITHFIELD!

Click on title above for full directory

Borens Calls Anti-Horse Slaughter Folk "Elitists"

Rep. Dan Boren’s town hall conference calls reach many
BY CHRIS CASTEEL
Published: November 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — By the time Rep. Dan Boren hung up the phone in his Capitol Hill office last Monday night, nearly 9,000 people had listened to him talk about such topics as health care, energy, horse slaughtering and hunting in Honobia.

Rep. Dan Boren fields questions during a town hall meeting at the Mid-America Expo Center south of Pryor, OK Aug. 18, 2009. MICHAEL WYKE/Tulsa World

He had talked about various burgs in his eastern Oklahoma district — "There are some Borens who live in Calvin,” he told one person — and dropped names such as Ted Nugent and T. Boone Pickens.

He spent a lot of time listening and nodding as callers listed their worries about Washington.

"You threw a lot of issues out there,” Boren told one caller who had a particularly long list of grievances. "Czars and guns and Copenhagen.”

Boren, a Democrat from Muskogee, held the latest in a series of "telephone town hall” meetings last week, taking advantage of an Internet-driven means to talk to the folks back home just after casting a vote on the House floor.

Boren’s office sent out a notice to district residents earlier this month that he was going to conduct some telephone town halls and asking those interested to call with their names and phone numbers. At the appointed time, a computer called all of the numbers and linked in participants.

Zain Khan, CEO of IConstituent, the company hired by Boren’s office to set up the calls, said more than half of the 535 lawmakers in Washington have used the technology.

"It’s a growing number,” he said.

President Barack Obama, he said, had done a call with about 1 million people.

Khan said it makes contact with the congressman easier for everyone, including the constituents.

Boren, as did many lawmakers, appeared in person at town hall meetings in his district in August; several hundred people showed up for those, far more than ever before as intense feelings about government spending and health care proposals drove people out to see him.

At the time, Boren had already planned the telephone town hall meetings, committing $13,500 for a package of four such calls, and he didn’t have any in-person meetings on his schedule.

However, he hastily arranged two when attendance was surging at other lawmakers’ events and some were asking why he wasn’t appearing anywhere.

Almost 9,000 different people were on last week’s hourlong call at one time or another; there was a steady audience of about 600 throughout the call.

Boren could pick among the callers to try to get different topics, though it didn’t always work out; a caller that he thought would ask about the stimulus bill asked about hunting access.

Though he was inside Washington, Boren did all he could to distance himself from it, dismissing "elitists” who, he said, don’t know that it’s more humane to slaughter horses than to let them starve, agreeing that people should worry about "unelected bureaucrats making decisions for us,” and saying he serves on the National Rifle Association board with Ted Nugent and would never restrict gun ownership.

"I could sit here and talk all night,” Boren said as the session wound down.

Read more: http://www.newsok.com/rep.-dan-borens-town-hall-calls-reach-many/article/3413631#ixzz0VcInZ6Hc


http://www.newsok.com/rep.-dan-borens-town-hall-calls-reach-many/article/3413631