Well, we finally got a response back from Dr. Friend. It's a long drawn
out
confirmation that he purposfully dehydrated and withheld food from horses to
conduct his research. We will be doing a petition against Texas
A&M for
allowing this research be done. In the petition there will be an area for
your name, location, email address and comments. We will be emailing
the
results of the petition to the Texas A&M and US Legislators. We do
encourage you to contact your legislators direct as well as sign the
petition. We will be sorting the results and sending the Texas state
legislators the responses with locations in Texas. The petition will be up
and running by Friday on http://www.rescuenetwork.com
I will send out
another email when it's ready.
Please feel free to forward and cross post this message in its entirety.
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---------------------------------------------
From: "Friend, Theodore H." <t-friend@tamu.edu>
To: "Equine Friends Admin" <webmaster@equinefriends.com>
Cc: "McNeill, John W" <j-mcneill@tamu.edu>
Subject: RE: USDA Grant
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:56:52 -0500
Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for your concern about the welfare of horses and your interest in
my research.
Texas A&M University and I do not in any way condone abusive practices with
any animals. That is precisely why I have been encouraged to conduct
studies relating to improving the welfare of horses and other animals. The
study that you appear to be most concerned about, where I proposed to
transport horses up to 36 hours without water, was successfully completed
and was largely the basis for the new USDA and Canadian regulations
governing the transport of horses going to slaughter. There would not have
been a time limit on the duration that slaughter horses could be transported
(28 hours) had my studies not been conducted. Those regulations are a
great
advance for the welfare of horses, especially when we consider that the last
Federal regulations controlling the transportation of livestock was adopted
in 1906. Those regulations are still evolving and there is a good chance
that the 28 hour maximum will be reduced.
Slaughter horses were often transported for much longer than 36 hours in the
U.S. prior to the new regulations. Actually, trips lasting two to three
days are still common when slaughter horses are transported from Eastern
Europe into Western Europe (Italy and Spain) for slaughter. Such long
trips
are very abusive to horses and my studies have produced the scientific
proof. I will be traveling to England in three weeks to present the
results
of my horse transport studies at an International Conference on the
Transportation of Horses. The International League for the Protection of
Horses is partially sponsoring the trip. The goal is to encourage the
European Union to take action based on scientific information. It is easy
for regulatory bodies to ignore claims made by animal activists because they
are also being bombarded by claims from the other side, but it is difficult
to ignore factual information.
In the HATCH Proposal that you cited, I stated that horses will be
transported up to 36 hours without water. As the duration of transport
progressed, several horse experts (veterinarians included) and I carefully
monitored the horses. I stopped transporting the horses who were not
watered after 30 hours and the horses who received water after 32 hours when
they started to show signs of fatigue. A detailed description of that
study, along with the results, is published in the Journal of Animal
Science, 2000.78:2568-2580. It is not uncommon for horses to
voluntarily
go 24 hours between drinking. In fact, feral horses in the Western United
States often go to water only once a day (Feist and McCullough. 1976.
Behavior patterns and communication in feral horses. Z Tierpsychol.,
41:337-371).
If you have further questions regarding my research or if your organization
would like to help fund some of our research projects to improve the welfare
of horses, please contact me.