From Finish Line To
Slaughterhouse
DEKALB, Ill., June 16, 2004
It was the 1986 Kentucky Derby.
Against 18-1 odds, Ferdinand left the pack and entered history.
But two years ago, after being sold to stud in Japan, Ferdinand was slaughtered.
As CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, it was probably for
food, just as tens of thousands are slaughtered every year in the United States.
But the slaughter of a champion has outraged the thoroughbred community in
America.
Nick Zito, the winning trainer in this year's Belmont Stakes, is part of a
growing movement to ban the killing of horses for human consumption.
"The horse is a special animal in America," says Zito. "He's a
symbol."
Americans don't eat horses, but three U.S. plants slaughter horses for export,
including a brand new slaughterhouse in Illinois.
"It's marketed in Europe like the other meats," says Cavel
International manager James Tucker.
Tucker says many horse owners see their animals as livestock, not as pets.
"We have a lot of horse people who say it should happen," says Tucker.
"They see it as a service. We recycle a resource that's otherwise
wasted."
The way that horses are killed - a steel bolt into their heads - is also central
to this debate. Critics believe that too often it takes more than one blow and
that makes the process inhumane.
Gail Vacca of American Horse Protection Coalition treats her retired racehorses
like rich uncles. She believes that slaughter betrays a horse's trust in man.
"And then in the end when we are through with them, we're going to drag
them to the slaughterhouse and let them suffer a miserable death?" she
says. "Absolutely it's betrayal."
Critics of this practice say slaughterhouses miss too much.
"That's absolutely false," says Tucker. "If we would miss, too
many times we would be shut down by the USDA."
Two bills to shut down horse slaughter altogether are stalled in Congress.
"You know a horse is really part of our culture, and you know I think when
you lose your culture, you lose your soul," says Zito.
For now, America's three horse slaughterhouses will stay open for business,
unless the law changes, and horses are treated as pets - not protein - at the
finish line of their lives.