In this article, Lauren Donovan, speaks of what most people don't want to hear. Horse slaughter has been illegal for a few years now and there are new problems on the rise. Although horses are no longer being abused and put in the slaughter house conditions in the U.S, they are being loaded to Canada and Mexico where the conditions are worse. For the unwanted horses that don't make it to other countries, they are being abandoned and killed without professional help. Who's to say that people are killing their unwanted horses in a humane way? Yes, many people are putting bullets into their horses heads rather than having them euthanized because of horse slaughter being illegal.
I think that horse slaughter needs to be legalized because of all the issues that have risen from it being illegal. I would rather know that a horse is being killed in a humane way than just being shot and possibly not killed until the 4th or 5th shot. Many people are even abandoning their horses for other people to take care of or to let them starve to death. There needs to be something done to prevent the suffering of the unwanted horses. According to this article, 1% of all horses are unwanted. I think that legalizing horse slaughter with more strict rules about the process would be an upgrade from where we are now.
This is a disturbing article, but I agree with you. I think that having a horsed shipped to another country to be shot in the head is a terrible thing. I think there are better ways for people here to do. For example, they could kill the horse by using a shot. I think that they should legalize this and make it like a hospice situation.
ReplyDeleteFrom experience of living on a farm my whole life I have heard of this issue countless times. Many people don't know what to do with their horses in situations such as if they can no longer afford to feed them or if they are to old so they just set them free. Thinking they will just go feral and survive on their own, however they have no idea how to battle out the elements and live on their own so they end up dieing at an early age or in a abrupt way. Many people will even end up shooting the horses themselves to spare them the misery of an injury or being old and miserable with arthritis instead of having a huge vet bill to do it humanely. However horrible the horse slaughter houses sound they served a purpose. For now people don’t know what to do with the body of a deceased horse and now more horses are being treated inhumanely by being set free, shot, or shipped to a horribly conditioned slaughterhouse of another country. More rules and regulations should be set upon the slaughterhouses so they are humane so they could be opened again. Many companies only show horrible pictures in commercials on TV about the badly treated animals when they really have no idea on the situation. Do your research and look at both sides of a situation before making a decision because from the results of this situation the decision made was a bad one. It has only hindered people more and it has caused more horses to suffer in life.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you too. There needs to either be set rules and regulations on how your go about putting down a horse, or maybe the government should provide some sort of service to help put the horse down or take the horse away themselves. I was just watching World of Jenks on MTV, it's a documentary style show where he follows different people and tries to understand their logic/culture, and he was following an animal rights activist who broke into a slaughter farm and the images of the dead horses were extremely gruesome and inhumane. So it's definitely still a problem in the United States and I can only image the severity of it in other countries.
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