Horse Meat and Horse Manure

Thank you, Vicki and John Holland for your replies to Dr Williams’ editorial on the increasing dangers of Animal Rights Activism to the Canadian Livestock Industry. You helped prove his point. Allow me my comments and we’ll close the subject on the blog site.

First let me say, I like cattle and steak but am not at all fond of the process that turns one into the other. However killing animals for food is one of the necessary evils which humankind must deal with until such time as the “lion lies down with the lamb”. I also believe that humankind has been given dominion over all the earth, which gives us substantial responsibility towards all creatures. If we are all equally animals then we have no more care about the well being of our “prey” than a wolf for the deer population.

Vegetarianism is not the answer as it does not take into account what to do with the millions and millions of agricultural animals already here. If we part company with them, so to speak, what then do we owe them? Do we just let them starve? Engage in mass slaughter until they are extinct so they no longer "suffer" at our hands?

Agricultural animals make the supreme sacrifice for humankind and should be treated with dignity and respect, and protected from unnecessary pain and fear, in other words, humanely, from birth through to slaughter. Dr Temple Grandin, the world’s leading designer of livestock handling facilities, has devoted her professional life to improving the welfare of animals. The following are quotes from her website:
· I feel very strongly that we owe agricultural animals a decent life and I will be the first to admit that some agricultural practices need to be changed.
· The single most important factor which affects animal welfare is the attitude of management. Places that have good animal welfare have a manager who cares about welfare. Places where animal welfare is poor often have a manager who does not care.
· To maintain a high standard of welfare during handling and slaughter management, personnel in the abattoir must be attentive to details of the procedure and supervise and train employees. For good animal welfare, a plant must be equipped with well designed stunning and handling equipment which is kept well maintained by trained, conscientious employees.

This brings us to the slaughter of horses for food. There is a great deal of emotional baggage attached to horses since they are viewed as pets by people who “learned about animals from Walt Disney”. No, we don’t need to slaughter horses for food. When they reach the end of their useful life they can be euthanized as we do for dogs and cats and buried deep. Either way they are still dead.

Vicki, you say you are an equine welfare advocate. If that were the case you would have been working to improve the handling of horses at the plants, not campaigning to ban the slaughter of horses for food. Sorry, no, both you and John Holland are into animal rights not animal welfare. You complain the plant at DeKalb fought the law to the Supreme Court, (which is its right and duty to fight stupid laws) and cost you “hard earned tax dollars”. Obviously you don’t mind other people’s hard earned tax dollars going to feed some 20,000 wild horses that are surplus to available BLM grazing land and which cannot be sold for slaughter, or which will be needed to look after horses that used to be slaughtered every year but now have nowhere to go.

John Holland, you claim you work for nothing and feed yourself. Noble of you. I assume Americans Against Horse Slaughter don’t pay you to be their senior analyst? You would have us believe the entire movement was spontaneous and voluntary? And lobbying Congress is free? How gullible do you think we are? All the arguments you and Vicki raise in your comments to Dr Williams have nothing to do with horse slaughter. Tax evasion and pollution are mentioned, improper animal handling is implied. If those are your true concerns, are you suggesting if the horse slaughter plants cleaned up their acts, you would then lobby to repeal the ban? Right.

Dr. Williams can have the last word: The issue John Holland describes is a problem with enforcing the rules on humane handling and tax evasion, which I fully support. What is of concern to me is that horse slaughter is eliminated in the US and possibly in Canada as well, which was/is wrong headed. I doubt the plea of no money involved because one doesn't have a Congressional lobby carried out for peanuts.