Slaughter Houses: the Humane Option

by Matt
(Michigan)

The matter of reopening the equine slaughter houses is important to me because I am a horse owner/trainer. I grew up with horses and have worked with over one-hundred and fifty different horses. I have seen horses that are starving out in the wild because people could not afford to feed and care for them. I have worked with horses that get past from trainer to trainer with no one making any progress. From my past experience I can tell you that there are horses that need to be gotten rid of, because they put riders at risk or they are too old. These horses are still around because people used to be able to sell them for slaughter, but with the market ban on horse meat they just get moved around form place to place; which in reality puts more stress on the animal than having them slaughtered would.
I do not want to come across as someone that thinks horses should just be killed off. As I stated earlier I am an avid horseman and love to train and ride horses. I have helped keep many horses alive and have spent nights watching a horse to make sure they stay alive. I have also seen them die, felt the last shiver of life come out of them as the struggle stops. What bothers me the most about this is that out of the horses I have saved or tried to save the majority of them would have been sold to a horse meat processor had they been able to. They would have died humanely instead of suffering in a stall or pasture. To me this subject is overlooked by people that think they are helping horses by stopping the slaughter houses. They have never had to take a horse, a friend out into the pasture and end it’s suffering for it.