To:  Texas House Agriculture & Livestock Committee Members
Date:  March 25, 2003
Re:  Betty Brown's American Live Horse Slaughter HB 1324
From:  Mary S. Nash, 104 S. Houston St., Kaufman, TX 75142

I am Mary Stuart Nash.  I live in Kaufman, Texas at 104 S. Houston Street, and I’m against House Bill 1324.   

The 40 acre farm adjacent to the Dallas Crown horse slaughtering plant in Kaufman has been in my family for 150 years. I’ve seen horses arrive in cattle haulers on their way to slaughter.  I’ve seen the horses being unloaded, and I’ve seen the horses milling around in their holding pens.  I’ve been around horses all my life.  My horse died last year at age 32.  I know what an old horse looks like.  These horses don’t look old, they don’t look sick, and they don’t look lame.   

So many times when I’ve looked at those Dallas Crown slaughter horses, I’ve thought to myself, “They look a lot better than any horse I ever had.”

Larry Saling from Kaufman had his horse stolen last year, and he suspected it ended up at Dallas Crown, but he could never find out for sure because Dallas Crown does not file their slaughter reports with the Kaufman County Clerk’s office, although Agriculture Code Section 148 says they should.

I went to the Kaufman County Courthouse on Monday, March 17 to look for records from Dallas Crown, and there simply are none.   

I cannot get over the fact that we allow our horses to be slaughtered by Frenchmen and shipped overseas to be eaten by Frenchmen.  And to add insult to injury, while we’re satisfying their palates, we’re padding their pocketbooks.  Wealthy French diners don't pay $20 per pound to eat old and sick horses.  They eat young, healthy horses like the ones in the photos presented to your Committee Clerk.

In 1812 when Napoleon’s starving soldiers ate their horses, the food culture in this country was already well established.  We didn’t eat our horses then, and we don’t eat our horses now.

So if the French want to eat horsemeat, fine.  Let them eat their own horses.  But if the French want to eat American horses….I say, let them eat cake.

*****************

Reference footnote:
“Let them eat cake” [if there is no bread], writes Jean Jacques Rousseau in his 1766 Confessions. Rousseau attributes the remark to “a great princess,” but it will be widely ascribed in the 1780s and 1790s to Vienna’s Marie Antoinette, then 11, who will become queen of France in 1774. [1]