Investors in Wyoming equine slaughterhouse watch N.M. project carefully

A group of potential investors in a Fremont County horse slaughtering plant are watching the national political scene to see whether such projects can get started in other states. Valley Meat Co. — a proposed slaughterhouse in Roswell, N.M. — is slated to open in late April. According to published reports, the plant is expected to receive approval despite strong opposition from various advocacy groups, including the Humane Society of the U.S., and efforts to block it in Congress. Four members of Congress recently introduced federal legislation to ban the slaughter of American horses and to prohibit shipping horses out of the country for slaughter. The attorney for the owner of the Valley Meat Co. in Roswell is A. Blair Dunn. The plant’s plans are still on track, Dunn wrote Thursday in an email to the Star-Tribune. If the Roswell plant opens, it will be the first operation to slaughter horses in the United States since 2007. Federal legislation that year prohibited the U.S. Department of Agriculture from spending its budget on the inspection of horse meat. Since horse slaughterhouses can’t operate without USDA inspections, the law effectively banned the plants. The 2007 prohibition against inspections was removed from the law in 2011. Since then several companies, including Valley Meat Co., have applied to the USDA to resume inspections of horses for slaughter. In Wyoming and particularly in Fremont County, there is considerable interest in establishing a horse slaughtering plant, said Keja Whiteman, a Fremont County commissioner. “Nothing is set in stone but there definitely is interest for a multitude of reasons,” Whiteman said last week. In addition to being centrally located, the county has a significant population of feral, as opposed to wild, horses. “People are turning out their domestic horses out on tribal land and federal land in Fremont County,” Whiteman said. “And, frankly, horses are starving to death and the ones that aren’t are multiplying, and neither is good.”...more