Owner, Jacobi Group Bloodstock and Specialty Insurance

by Ruth Jacobi
(Cottonwood, Az)

I have loved and respected horses always, and generously support animal welfare of all species.

Our country has developed a quick-paced, sound-byte mentality that serves to polarize people over issues like this one, rather than encourage quiet and purposeful thought that could better lead to comprehensive solutions based upon real-world conditions.

When the extravagantly funded animal rights organizations started working to close American slaughterhouses, I knew that it would ultimately cause the dreadful conditions for horses that have now come to pass. This is largely due to the fact that animal rights organizations do not promote animal welfare and do not fund or operate animal welfare shelters, but simply have as their goal the agenda to remove meat of all kinds from the American diet, one lawsuit at a time.

The absolute fact is that horses are chattel and can be bought and sold, and from this we need to inform our remedy for their current plight.

Horses will be sold for slaughter, if not in America, then in Mexico, where the conditions for these horses are more reprehensible than almost any American could imagine.

The solution is to open numerous small slaughterhouses across our country, so that the transport time is short, and the locations are continually reviewed by local animal welfare people. That way, the business of slaughter would remain in America, a country that by far has in general, higher regard for animals than almost any other country in the world, and could be under local review for its adherence to sound animal husbandry.

Slaughter in and of itself does not have to be something from the bowels of hell; it can be managed humanely and carefully, with proper care and respect given to the animals. In addition, American facilities would by law need to ascertain the ownership of the horses, decreasing the current "theft bonus" for horses being transported into Mexico.


I have heard people defend the way horses are treated on the way to slaughter by saying that God put animals on the earth for man to use, but God does not tell us to cause untold suffering to the beasts of the field, but to be good husbands of them.

Anyone who believes that it is a God-given right of a person to so use a horse in any manner that causes him to be terrorized, brutalized, callously injured or treated, deprived of water or feed, and deprived of his sense of well-being on his way to an inhumane and tortured end is a person who obviously uses the concept of "God" as a means to abrogate his own personal responsibility and moral imperative.

The issue of horse slaughter is not an easy one to address, but humane slaughter is better than starvation, and better than indiscriminately turning horses loose to be hit by vehicles or caught in the multitudinous snares of our no-longer agrarian culture and that, friends, is what is happening now.

There are not enough rescue sites to absorb all unwanted horses, and morality is not a one-size-fits-all; sometimes it is more moral to kill, than not to kill. Our measure as individuals and as a culture is not in the killing, but in how the killing is managed.