8,300 Bound for the Slaughterhouse
If you care about bait-and-switch politics,
if you care about American history,
if you care about the ecology,
if you care about wild horses, please give me a minute of your time.
During Thanksgiving, while most of us--Congresspeople and reporters included--had our attention focused elsewhere, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) slipped a one-page rider, #142, into the 3,000+ page federal appropriations bill. Congress and Bush signed off on it. Quite possibly few in Congress even realized the rider was there; those who did notice, it's said, ignored the rider because they were concerned about getting the appropriations bill passed to avoid a government shut-down. There were no public hearings, no debate, no attention from the media. Thus Rider #142 was signed into law Dec. 8 and took effect Jan. 5.
Rider #142 permits the Bureau of Land Management, charged with the protection of America's wild horses, to sell these animals "without limitation" to the highest bidder. Any wild horse over the age of 10 and any so-called "three-strike horses" can be sold.
"Three strikes," in BLM parlance, doesn't mean the horse has committed three offenses or has three things wrong with it; "three strikes" means that the horse was put up for adoption three times and no one took him. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the animal; maybe he just doesn't stand out in the crowd. Maybe he's just not as spirited, or maybe he's more spirited. Maybe he's just not as pretty as others. And as for the age limitation, horses can live well into their 20s, even 30s, so to say that a 10-year-old horse is too old is equivelent to saying people over 35 ought to be put out to pasture.
"Without limitation" is the key phrase in #142. On Jan. 8--just three days after the law took effect--the Bandera Bulletin reported that the BLM had "already approved a lump sale of over 8,300 wild horses and burros to a single buyer."
Over 8,300 animals to a single buyer.
What individual or group would need 8,300 wild horses? What individual or group would even have the land to sustain that many wild animals, and the means to feed them, protect them from predators, provide for their medical needs?
Unless, of course, these animals are not going to be sustained.
The Burns bill gave the BLM permission to sell wild horses without regard for the buyer's intentions. The BLM now has permission to sell to slaughterhouses--and we're not just talking dog food here. Three slaugherhouses in the U. S., including two in Dallas, sell horse meat to high-priced restaurants in Europe and Japan.
If you find any of this abhorrent--either the slaughter of our wild horses for purpose of entertaining the gullets of the wealthy, or the way this bill was passed--please add a comment to this post. I'm working on getting HR 297, the Rahall/Whitfield Bill, passed. 297 amends the Burns bill to prohibit the BLM from selling to slaughterhouses.
if you care about American history,
if you care about the ecology,
if you care about wild horses, please give me a minute of your time.
During Thanksgiving, while most of us--Congresspeople and reporters included--had our attention focused elsewhere, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) slipped a one-page rider, #142, into the 3,000+ page federal appropriations bill. Congress and Bush signed off on it. Quite possibly few in Congress even realized the rider was there; those who did notice, it's said, ignored the rider because they were concerned about getting the appropriations bill passed to avoid a government shut-down. There were no public hearings, no debate, no attention from the media. Thus Rider #142 was signed into law Dec. 8 and took effect Jan. 5.
Rider #142 permits the Bureau of Land Management, charged with the protection of America's wild horses, to sell these animals "without limitation" to the highest bidder. Any wild horse over the age of 10 and any so-called "three-strike horses" can be sold.
"Three strikes," in BLM parlance, doesn't mean the horse has committed three offenses or has three things wrong with it; "three strikes" means that the horse was put up for adoption three times and no one took him. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the animal; maybe he just doesn't stand out in the crowd. Maybe he's just not as spirited, or maybe he's more spirited. Maybe he's just not as pretty as others. And as for the age limitation, horses can live well into their 20s, even 30s, so to say that a 10-year-old horse is too old is equivelent to saying people over 35 ought to be put out to pasture.
"Without limitation" is the key phrase in #142. On Jan. 8--just three days after the law took effect--the Bandera Bulletin reported that the BLM had "already approved a lump sale of over 8,300 wild horses and burros to a single buyer."
Over 8,300 animals to a single buyer.
What individual or group would need 8,300 wild horses? What individual or group would even have the land to sustain that many wild animals, and the means to feed them, protect them from predators, provide for their medical needs?
Unless, of course, these animals are not going to be sustained.
The Burns bill gave the BLM permission to sell wild horses without regard for the buyer's intentions. The BLM now has permission to sell to slaughterhouses--and we're not just talking dog food here. Three slaugherhouses in the U. S., including two in Dallas, sell horse meat to high-priced restaurants in Europe and Japan.
If you find any of this abhorrent--either the slaughter of our wild horses for purpose of entertaining the gullets of the wealthy, or the way this bill was passed--please add a comment to this post. I'm working on getting HR 297, the Rahall/Whitfield Bill, passed. 297 amends the Burns bill to prohibit the BLM from selling to slaughterhouses.
posted by Anonymous at 5:32 PM
1 Comments:
This story is very upsetting to me! I love horses and I can't imagine them being slaughtered! I guess it's possible that there are too many horses to sustain in the wild, but if there is some way to publicize the adoptions, perhaps more horses would find good homes. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
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