Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 8:31 AM
Subject: humane treatment enforcement
Good morning, officers of the HCI!
It was a pleasure receiving your email
regarding the "vote yes flyer," and I was planning on voting yes on
this issue, and encouraging my horse friends to do the same.
However, upon reading your
"statement on slaughter," i must let you know that I will no longer
make any efforts to be involved with anything HCI does. Your organization is
stated to represent me, the Illinois horseman, but I could not disagree more
vehemently with the input provided in your statement.
Horse slaughter was decreased
dramatically in the US several years ago, yet complaints of neglect, abandon
and abuse have not risen even a single percentage point. The kind of people
who abandon and abuse their horses are not savvy or aware enough, nor do they
care enough, to bother to transport these horses to slaughter to dispose of
same.
I suspect some breed groups are behind
your stance, who realize that the excessive breeding currently occurring in
the US is already creating a terrible glut of unneeded and unwanted horses,
and that their prices will fall through the floor for the unwanted, unplanned,
unneeded animals. However, if they and the many backyard breeders no longer
have an outlet for income related to this clueless and irresponsible behavior,
then we can all hope that it will slow dramatically.
Lastly, if you can support this type of
violent and horrendous deaths to our horses:
(click on view video)
then, it is apparent to me that your
organization does NOT support the humane treatment of our animals.
The Congressional Horse Caucus, and many
other aware horseman's organizations who are not driven solely by breed
groups' finances and the concern of their breeders that they cannot continue
to get $300 for their throw-off foals when they have bred far too many and one
is not cute enough or bright eyed enough, or....
I encourage you to read this excellently
written article regarding "where would all the horses go" by an
officer of Fasig-Tipton -- an organization surely to be concerned regarding
this "terrible effect on our industry" if there was one to fear....
I also encourage you to step outside your
plush offices and walk into a sale barn, or visit a rescue facility such as
mine. See the types of horses that are currently going to slaughter. See the
yearlings, the racehorses, the plow horses, the animals that are being trucked
all over the country, to sale after sale, en route to slaughter houses unless
the unscrupulous buyer can get an extra $.10/pound out of him selling him off
to some other sucker along the way.
Abuse cases exist all over the country.
Slaughter does nothing to prevent this, but it undoubtedly encourages it.
EVERY horse shipped to slaughter commercially is in an abusive situation. Have
you ever watched an employee of one of the slaughterhouses purchase horses at
a sale? and load them onto double decker trailers, loose, where they are
kicking, fighting, half killing one another? not to mention the hours they
spend in the "killer pens" at the sales, half killing one another,
before they even start the terrifying truck ride. Water? No way. Feed? Yah,
right....
I encourage you to open your eyes and
look around you. And to talk to ALL of Illinois horsemen, not just those
who make their money selling overpriced babies.
Sincerely,