Slaughtering Horses

 The Montana House of Representatives strongly endorsed a bill that paves the way for construction of a horse slaughterhouse. This is an extremely touchy subject due to the general love and reverence most people have for horses. But hard times bring hard decisions and there is a market for horse meat. Dr. Bill Barton, Idaho’s Chief Veterinarian. “For a fair number of years, horses used to go through the slaughter facilities and were used as feedstuffs for pets.”

 Dogfood?

 (Barton) “Yeah, I tried to put it nicely. The pet food industry has grown to the point that there are other sources of protein available to them that they pretty much quit using the horse meat component. During that time, the European market for humanely slaughtered, federally inspected horse meat for human consumption really blossomed. Virtually all the horses that were slaughtered in the U.S. for a fair number of years have been federally inspected and were going to the European market. It remained profitable for the slaughter facilities to continue based on that market. Horse meat in Europe is considered an excellent protein source and the Europeans don’t have the stigma attached to consuming that product that we do. A year and a half ago that option became unavailable as the few remaining slaughter plants in the U.S. for horses were closed down based on strong lobbying by the Humane society.”