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So, it is ok if we export beef to foreign countries, but not if we export horsemeat?  Or are you saying that we shouldn't do any business with foreign companies at all?  (There goes Toyota, Honda, Subaru, etc.)  When Cavel was operating in central Oregon, the guys working there were all local guys with local families to feed.  Is it wrong for them to have jobs? 

 

And again, how does "less of a loss" encourage overbreeding?  A loss is still a loss.  The upper end of the racing industry doesn't bat an eye at the difference of a few hundred dollars.  The "here today gone tomorrow" breeders still go out of business, because they still take a loss.  And as long as you ensure the humanity of the horse's death, why is it so wrong for that death to buy a ton of hay for his compatriots left at home? 

 

Maybe it was the standards instilled in me by depression-raised parents, but I abhor waste.  If there were a local plant here where I could take horses on kill day, I would not struggle with the unethical choice of leaving a perfectly good carcass out for the coyotes.  The price I would receive for such a horse is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of running this place--but I don't see what is so wrong about getting paid some paltry sum to do the right thing, as it were.  That small check, in many instances, causes the horse owned by the casual owner to endure far less suffering than he would otherwise.

 

But again, it boils down to the welfare of the HORSE.  If a few paltry dollars encourage a marginal owner to end the horse's life while he is still healthy enough to merit a check instead of letting him starve, or become seriously debilitated, or turning him loose on public lands, then HURRAH, because the HORSE is the benefactor.  Does it matter if the person who owns the company is foreign??  The HORSE is the winner, as long as he is not batched and shipped to far places.

 

And to paraphrase something I said before, the HORSE does not care, once he is dead, if the person eating him is local or foreign, any more than he cares if the person is rich or poor, or if the critter is even a person.  The focus here needs to be on the HORSE, and the best solution for the HORSE would be if Congress grew enough backbone to tell the anti-slaughter zealots what really happens as a result of their efforts and then encouraged the opening of small and relatively local plants to eliminate the parts of the process that are truly inhumane.

 

Heidi

         "I'm not sure where you get the idea that it is 'big business' to breed and 'dump' horses"

That is because it is not what I said. I said big businesses (racetrack, show-barn and other large breeding organizations) are encouraged by the current system to dump horses this way because even though they are taking a big loss, they still get a few hundred dollars instead of having to pay hundreds of dollars. And besides, if the horses these big operations are dumping are not sick, old or crazy, they wouldn't  find anyone else that would agree to kill them. So the foreigners that are capitalizing on all the cheap "horseflesh" that is available in this country are providing a market that is encouraging overbreeding and other practices to continue. And the foreigners don't care about how the animals are living while they are waiting t o die. It is the current PROCESS of long strung-out abuse that is the issue on topic. No one is criticizing a humane, local, system for individual horses to be euthanized and disposed of individually when their time comes to die. The issue is also about killing healthy horses en mass for a foreign profit motive. 

 

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