Main target of slaughter summit now wild horses

Rumors are that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will attend the Summit of the Horse in Las Vegas together with what advocates call the “Who’s Who” of horse slaughter.

This was reported hot on the heels of the revelation that Bob Abbey, who is the Director of the Bureau of Land Management (the DOI agency responsible for the Wild Horse & Burro Program), will be a keynote speaker.

Before Abbey and Salazar got involved, attendees and speakers were mainly comprised of individuals working to return horse slaughter to U.S. soil for the butchering of domestic horses to feed people in state institutions, such as prison inmates, the elderly and mentally challenged, to start with at least.

However, the focus of the horse slaughter convention has taken an even grislier turn and now has America’s wild horses in its deadly glare.

The Associated Press reports via The Seattle Times:

Groups seek solution to too many wild horses

Representatives from Indian tribes, federal agencies and other groups plan to meet next week in Las Vegas to discuss what to do about too many wild horses in the West.

Wyoming legislator Sue Wallis is a member of United Horsemen, a nonprofit group organizing the meeting. She tells The Seattle Times that she favors developing a plant where horses can be slaughtered for human consumption. She says that’s a humane solution to the problem of thousands of wild horses overgrazing and destroying rangeland.

That idea, however, faces strong opposition. The U.S. horse slaughter industry was shut down in 2007 by animal-rights activists. Since then, tribes and range managers say, the number of horses has grown to thousands more than the land can support.

We found the article in the San Francisco Chronicle here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/12/30/state/n141536S39.DTL#ixzz19fAXtJDR

Also on the agenda is how to get around the legal restrictions at the federal level which essentially prohibits the export of horsemeat for human consumption. Just about every ounce of horsemeat was exported for human consumption prior to the closure of horse slaughter plants in the US in 2007. This is where the real money is, as horsemeat is considered a delicacy overseas and sells for a high price.

Throughout 2009 and 2010, numerous legislators searched for loopholes in the law interfering with horsemeat export for overseas diners. The foreign owners of horse slaughter plants are suspected of seeding American politicians’ pockets with huge cash incentives to accomplish it, although nothing has yet been proved.