Judge in Horse Slaughter Case Corrects Mistake; No Next Round Date Set

Federal District Court Judge M. Christina Armijo has amended her order temporarily banning horsemeat packing in the U.S. because it was too broadly drawn. Armijo’s original Aug. 2 temporary restraining order said USDA was ordered to suspend or withhold the provision of “meat inspection services” to Valley Meat and Responsible Transportation until further order of the court. Armijo officially amended the temporary restraining order Wednesday to order USDA “to suspend or withhold the provision of horse meat inspection services to Valley Meat and Responsible Transportation until further order of the Court.” And although the judge’s Aug. 2 order promised a hearing on the plaintiff’s motion for a temporary injunction, it has not yet been scheduled. There has been a blizzard of filings over the request to change the temporary restraining order and the injunction bond.  In the blizzard of paper now before the court, however, perhaps the most dramatic is the declaration from Ricardo De Los Santos, general manager of Valley Meat in Roswell, NM.
“Valley is a small locally operated Hispanic business that lacks the resources to protect itself from the economic harm sought to be done to it by the large multi-million activists groups that are seeking to enjoin USDA from facilitating Valley’s lawful agribusiness operation,” he states. De Los Santos says Valley has spent $150,000 retrofitting its plant for equine operations and is now out almost $22,000 per day in gross revenue for each day the court prevents it from processing horse meat. “The actions of Plaintiffs have trapped Valley with no alternative but to devote its extremely diminished and dwindling resources toward litigation and the bare minimum needed to keep the plant in a ready state should the hurdles imposed by Plaintiffs and this Court be removed,” his declaration states. The Yakama and Navajo Indian nations are intervenors on the side of the defendants in the cases in part because of their concern about the damage being done to tribal and public lands by the swelling populations of wild horses...more