Ranchers, breeders at Las Vegas summit rally for return of horse slaughterhouses in US

Horses should be slaughtered and processed in the United States and then sold as food to other countries that regularly consume the lean, tender meat, speakers said Wednesday at a conference aimed at reviving the country's unpopular horse processing industry. Not eating the animals, in fact, disregards the food chain's natural cycle that sustains all creatures, said Sue Wallis, vice president of the United Horseman group of Wyoming, which organized the conference. Proponents hope the summit — attended by hundreds of ranchers, breeders and lawmakers — will draw attention to an untapped economic resource. Reopening horse slaughterhouses would create jobs and increase the market value of an animal whose sale price has plummeted in recent years, they say. Horses are now shipped to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered there, a cost-prohibitive expense for many horse owners, slaughter advocates said. Temple Grandin, an animal science professor at Colorado State University, said shuttering the United States' heavily regulated horse slaughterhouses has allowed inhumane processing factories to flourish in other nations...more