Horse Slaughter Draws Ire

They shoot horses, don't they?

Hard as it for some people to believe, horsemeat is considered a delicacy in some countries, selling for an estimated $20 a pound. Thus there is a small but significant export market for the product, and the industry raises the ire of animal lovers. A recent flurry of activity in all three branches of government shows how much is riding on the issue.

It started with an amendment in the Department of Agriculture spending bill last fall. The amendment cut off funds as of March 10 for federal inspection at the three U.S. plants that slaughter horses, hoping to shut them down. Instead, the plant owners filed a petition offering to have their Belgian owners pay for the inspections privately. The USDA agreed to do just that in a final interim regulation published this month. The companies will pay $43.64 an hour for the services of six USDA inspectors.

And last week, animal protection groups, led by the Humane Society of the United States , filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the new rule. They say it creates a "fee-for-service" inspection program without public comment and in "direct contravention" of Congress's wishes.

For the past several years, the groups have been pushing for a congressional ban on horse slaughter because of what they say is inhumane treatment of the animals.

According to the Agriculture Department, some 85,000 horses -- about 1 percent of the domestic population -- were slaughtered in North America in fiscal 2005 for export to Europe and Asia for human consumption. Without certification, the meat cannot be legally sold or exported. There is no domestic human market for the meat, though some is sold to zoos for animal feed.

The USDA and the three plants -- Beltex Corp. in Fort Worth; Dallas Crown Inc. in Kaufman, Tex.; and Cavel International Inc. in DeKalb, Ill. -- did not read the legislation as a shutdown order.

Richard Garcia , general manager at Beltex, said the fee-for-service arrangement is already used at the Fort Worth plant to pay for bison inspections. "This is something that has been in place. We didn't do any backroom deals," he said.

The Beltex plant has been operating since 1976 and processes about 35,000 horses annually. He said unwanted horses would be abandoned by owners if the slaughtering option was not available.

The agency's agreement to the plan infuriated some members of Congress.

"We are being thwarted by a few people in the Congress and the Department of Agriculture working with the lobbyists of the slaughterhouses to circumvent the clear intent of Congress," said Rep. Edward Whitfield (R-Ky.) , one of the sponsors of the amendment to cut off inspection funds.

James Michael Kelly , the USDA's acting general counsel, said in a letter to the sponsors that the provision "does not prevent horse slaughter at all. It merely prohibits expenditures of funds provided under the 2006 Act to pay the salaries and expenses of personnel to inspect horses." He said the conference report with the bill specified that the USDA is obligated to provide inspection services.