Horse Slaughter Draws Ire

By Cindy Skrzycki
Tuesday, February 21, 2006

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.

Some 40 members of Congress responded by writing to USDA Secretary Mike Johanns last month warning that the department should not engage in a "complex regulatory maneuver" in which it interpreted the law to say that it stopped inspections but not slaughter.

As for the fee-for-service arrangement, the USDA is authorized to accept private payment for bison, reindeer, ostrich and other exotic animals, said Steven Cohen , Food Safety and Inspection Service spokesman. Horses would be brought under this program with the new rule.

Leading the lobbying charge for the companies is former representative Charles W. Stenholm , a Democrat who retired last year after 26 years as a member of the Texas delegation and the House Agriculture Committee .

Stenholm, who is now senior policy adviser for Olsson Frank and Weeda PC , a Washington law firm, said the slaughtering process is humane and well-regulated. He stressed that horse owners have the right to decide how to put a horse out to pasture. They can pay for euthanasia administered by a veterinarian or go the slaughtering route, where the owner can pocket about $400.

"I have never eaten them or visited a plant," said Stenholm. "But it's a delicacy" to some in such countries as France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and Japan, he added. He said the export market totaled $28 million in 2003.

A public relations firm working for the plants produced 45 pages worth of letters from some 60 organizations, such as the American Quarter Horse Association and the American Farm Bureau , opposing the idea of ending horse slaughter.

The Quarter Horse Association said there are not enough rescue and adoption facilities to take care of unwanted horses. "All legal and humane options for terminating ownership of his/her horse should be available to the horse owner when such a difficult decision is made," it said in a statement.

Beltex's Garcia said the campaign against the slaughterhouses is misdirected because giving the animals a lethal injection does not mean an immediate death. "They don't close their eyes and die peacefully. Nobody films that," he said, referring to a proliferation of graphic videos on the Internet of the slaughtering process.

Animal-protection groups are fighting back. Besides last week's lawsuit, they are campaigning for passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which would outlaw horse slaughter altogether.

The groups said the horses are subject to inhumane treatment in their transport to the slaughterhouse and when they are killed with a shot from a captive bolt gun. They say "killer buyers" run a thriving business of buying horses from unsuspecting owners and then selling them for meat.

"It is an ugly, dirty industry," said Wayne Pacelle , president of the Humane Society. "Horses have had a bigger role in the history of this country than any other animal, and we are serving them abroad for a relative few pennies."