DeKalb, Illinois  September 12, 2003
Horse lover wants Cavel kept closed

SUSAN CLAY

Editor:

In case you Daily Chronicle readers aren't devastated by the fact that Cavel Inter-national wants to rebuild its horse slaughterhouse in DeKalb, let me say that the news hit us true horse lovers in Texas as hard as if we'd slammed, at 60 mph, into the concrete panels that Cavel intends to construct.

Just when we opponents of slaughter were hoping we could convince more than half of Congress to support the bill that seeks to ban the killing of American horses, along comes Cavel, as if to say: "Hey, guys, you may think the two plants in Texas will be closed by the federal judge's ruling, and you may think you'll get a majority of the legislators to vote for HR 857, but we're betting on horse processing plants staying in business for a long time."

Well, we against-slaughter-ites are like mother lions protecting their cubs. We love each and every horse too much to give up our fight for their lives. We believe our cause will win out, because we're siding with the qualities that our creator endowed humans and horses with: gentleness and goodness, caring and compassion. We're standing up for life, not death; for love, not its counterfeit, cruelty. We're arguing on behalf of truth -- the truth that slaughter betrays the horses' trust in hu-mans and the truth that the trip to the slaughterhouse and the slaughter itself are torturous, not humane! Butchering horses (I'm not talking cattle or hogs here) is a travesty of justice and its handmaid, mercy -- in the name of economic development.

As I pointed out in a personal letter to DeKalb city officials this week, "If we do what is morally wrong in order to achieve economic gains, we will end up losing all those gains, as well as our humanity. If we do what is morally right, we will not only bless our horses, we will bless all humanity."

SUSAN CLAY

Houston, Texas