Not cat related but I had to post this
Some excellent news for America's horses today (cross posted from elsewhere):
The final vote on the Ensign/Byrd amendment was 68-29 in favor of ending horse slaughter by withholding funds for federal inspectors in horse slaughterhouses and at the borders! The House and Senate bills now go to committee to create a final law. Since we won by 2/3rds in both the House and Senate, and since the amendment to each bill was identical, the committee would have no grounds not to include it in the final budget. Since it is a budget bill it is only going to be in effect for one fiscal year beginning November 1, but we still have HR503 in the house which can be passed by next year to end the business permanently!
This victory is the direct result of hundreds of horse owners and lovers working tirelessly to get this issue in front of the public and to convince their representatives and senators to do the right thing. We were opposed by powerful special interests like the AVMA and the AQHA, but we still won! From the bottom of my heart I thank everyone who took the time to get involved in this magnificent victory!
The final vote on the Ensign/Byrd amendment was 68-29 in favor of ending horse slaughter by withholding funds for federal inspectors in horse slaughterhouses and at the borders! The House and Senate bills now go to committee to create a final law. Since we won by 2/3rds in both the House and Senate, and since the amendment to each bill was identical, the committee would have no grounds not to include it in the final budget. Since it is a budget bill it is only going to be in effect for one fiscal year beginning November 1, but we still have HR503 in the house which can be passed by next year to end the business permanently!
This victory is the direct result of hundreds of horse owners and lovers working tirelessly to get this issue in front of the public and to convince their representatives and senators to do the right thing. We were opposed by powerful special interests like the AVMA and the AQHA, but we still won! From the bottom of my heart I thank everyone who took the time to get involved in this magnificent victory!
2 Comments:
I am still concerned if they with hold monies for inspectors. will the horse slaughter houses find a away around it. they might say the horse meat is exported, and not sold in the US. will they be able to do this? it is a worry. horses are sill slaughtered in Mexico also, many years ago, the horse meat was trucked into Texas, and repackaged to say the horsemeat was slaughtered in the US. i found that out, and i had spys, and witnesses to the whole operation how it was being done. another problem that is very important, is Canada has several horse slaughter houses. there is a pipe line that goes through NY. directly into Canada. so there will be a lot more work to be done, the pipe line has to be closed. Horses are trucked through NY. directly into Canada for slaughter. many years ago, horse froze to death in one of these trailers, it was in every paper in NYC.
I was with an organization years ago, we had made plans to fight to close the pipe line through NY. by chance i discovered another ograniztion, a well known one, had already gotten a state senator to introduce a bill in NY. the person who started this didn't give the senator any information as to how to prepare the bill. the bill was introduced, she didn't like the bill, she told the senator to with draw it. so he did, she killed out chances to close the pipe line, from Ny. into Canada. she had kept it a secret from everyone, she had planned to with hold what she had done. We spoke to the senator, he was very upset with what she had done. he told us he had asked her help in preparing the bill, she wouldn't assist. she destroyed everything, the damage was incredible.
I agree that with Canada and Mexico still slaughtering horses, horses will still be at risk. However, if we can close the American plants, that will make it less cost effective to kill horses. After all, if you have to haul them to another country first, that increases the cost and decreases the profit. It's all about the $$ to these people and the more we decrease their profits, the more horses survive.
Another point is that we HAVE to make the industries that overproduce horses more accountable. It's not OK for breeders to bring 50 horses into existence hoping that 1 will win money at the track. They have to initiate programs for retraining and placing the other 49, not just shipping them off to auction.
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