Wild horse blues

Willie Nelson
I don't know if you've been following it, but a couple of years ago Congress approved the sale of wild horses to slaughter houses. There was a huge outcry so they passed an appropriations bill designed to stop the practice but as soon as people looked away the USDA approved a petition submitted by the three foreign-owned horse slaughter plants in the United States to resume slaughter. Now the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals the American Humane Association plus other groups and individuals have banned together to sue the USDA. I hope you will consider participating in this effort. It has the best chance to succeed if we act together.

"Think occasionally of the suffering
of which you spare yourself the sight."
Dr. Albert Schweitzer

A horse can smell the blood and hear other horses crying from the "kill chute" and by the time it is lead into the "knockbox", it is generally shaking violently from fear, and scrambling and falling on the blood and urine soaked floor in an effort to escape because it sees other horses hanging upside down, bleeding to death. Once the horse is tied down the butcher bludgeons it with what they call a "captive bolt", a horrible name for a despicable act. The "captive bolt" is a four inch retractable nail, that is suppose to knock the horse unconscious, horrible enough on its own, but all too often the poor animal is still awake, terrified and struggling as one of its hind legs is shackled and it is yanked upside down into the air where its throat is cut and it is left hanging to "bleed out".

American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act: a permanent ban is still needed, and that's still only a start if we are to become a compassionate and ethical society.