Slaughtering horses illegal in US, people abandon instead

Over the last several years, hundreds of starving horses have been seized by authorities across the country. This is a result of the rising costs of hay and fuel, a depressed economy and the dubious political actions of animal rights activists that have led to the closing of the now much-needed equine slaughterhouses in the United States. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the number of horses whose owners will not or cannot care for them is rising at an explosive rate. Americans own more than 9 million horses today, up from just 6 million in the mid-1990s. With the state of the economy, many of these horse owners are unable to afford the costs of equine care. The price of hay alone has more than doubled this past year because of rising fuel prices. In the past, this set of circumstances might not have led to quite the crisis horse owners face today. Until recently, a market for unwanted horses existed in equine slaughterhouses which, according to a Department of Agriculture report, processed upwards of 70,000 horses annually for human consumption in Europe and Japan. Unsavory as it might seem to the sentimental, such slaughterhouses played a vital role in this country until they were shut down in 2007 because of pressure from animal rights activists. Today, while some unwanted horses end up in Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses, thousands more are left to suffer and starve...more