Dear Friends of the horses, joyous news!

Jerry Finch and his folks have been working on getting Dallas Crown
closed down for a long time! It all started with Mary Nash and her one
woman campaign many years ago. She passed from us recently, but
the fight has gone on. They have spent a lot of time both at the
plant and working with the residents of Boggy Bottom who all want
the plant closed.

The foulness of that place cannot be described, and Jerry has paid a
very high price in being there and listening and smelling the horrid deaths
of so many beautiful horses. The plant was operating in flagrant violation
of both local ordnances, state law, but were able to lawyer themselves
out of one assault after another.

Now it looks like his team has accomplished it!
I just got this from him along with permission to pass it on. We all
owe Jerry a huge debt, but all he says is "one down and two to go!"

John Holland


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Finch" <jfinch@habitatforhorses.org>
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 9:36 PM
Subject: Kaufman City Council


> By a unanimous vote, the Kaufman City Council decided that Dallas Crown
> out
> of compliance with their nonconforming use permit and has sent the
> decision
> to the Board of Adjustments (Zoning Board) to terminate their permit.
>
> In other words, we succeeded in drawing attention to the obvious nuisance
> of
> a nonconforming use entity, from the smell to the overcrowding to the
> uncovered offal trucks and made the City Council listen to the will of the
> community. It will still take awhile, but Dallas Crown is going down.
> There
> will be hearings, rulings, decisions, etc over the next few months. It
> won't
> be tomorrow, but there is no turning back.
>
> Steve Hulme, Mary Nash's husband, is on the Zoning Board, which is a
> blessing.
>
>
> Habitat for Horses, Inc/Lone Star Equine Rescue, Inc
> A Nonprofit Equine Rescue and Rehabilitation Center
> habitatforhorses.org/lser.org
> Become a member! Donate Now!
>

That is great news! Here's to hoping for a speedy and permanent closing.

Hi everyone,

As you may already know, we are in the process of moving the rescue from Oregon to Missouri. One of the things that I am most excited about is the opportunity to work on closing the Cavel plant in Illinois. I especially have hope with the current status of the Dallas Crown plant.

I would greatly appreciate talking to any members in that area of the country that have been working on this. Once we move I will be dedicating all of my time to the rescue and horses, and will be able to really focus on these issues.

I am also planning on volunteering to serve on the local humane society board, or perhaps volunteer to work with the DA's office in preparing cases against people abusing and neglecting animals (have to keep those attorney skills sharp somehow!). I would greatly appreciate any tips on how best to approach the issue, or any war stories or warnings that any of you might have to share.

I am sure that Kathleen and John have many wonderful comments and suggestions, and I look forward to discussing my ideas and plans with both of you in greater detail once we finish up selling everything in OR/WA and moving

Leslie,
Alder Hill Farm

PS when we move we will be setting up a route to bring the remaining yearlings to Missouri. If you have ever thought about adopting one of our gorgeous appy's but worried about the long haul and cost of transportation, now is the time to visit our website http://www.alderhillfarm.com and let us know if you would like a baby dropped off as we pass by your way!

Hi Leslie,

I am sure we could use you in this battle. Email me at hollandtech @ earthlink . net (leave out spaces) and I will help you get in contact with others.

John Holland

Kaufman may close slaughterhouse

Dallas Crown lawyer says horse plant would take legal action


08:27 PM CDT on Tuesday, August 16, 2005


By JIM GETZ / The Dallas Morning News


KAUFMAN - The Dallas Crown horse-slaughtering plant, already the
target of opponents ranging from its neighbors to Congress, now
faces action by a city board that could shut the facility down.

City Council members voted unanimously Monday to turn over to the
city's Zoning Board of Adjustments the question of whether the plant
has violated city nuisance laws. If that panel rules that is the
case, it could order the plant closed.

"I think the community is asking that we not play footsie," council
member Paula Hagler Wampler said, referring to neighbors'
complaints, "and if this is the first council that can do it, so be
it."

If the Board of Adjustments votes at its Sept. 27 meeting to shutter
the plant, Dallas Crown attorney Mark Calabria said Monday, there
would probably be a legal action filed to oppose the closing.

Mr. Calabria did just that a year ago, when the city shut off the
plant's sewer service after it had repeatedly overloaded the city's
wastewater system. District Judge Erleigh Norville ruled that the
plant should continue to operate and ordered both sides into
mediation over wastewater issues. Since then, testing has resumed
and the two sides are edging toward a new sewer permit.

Mr. Calabria also pointed out that an inspection by the Texas
Commission on Environmental Quality found no violations in July, and
that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has an inspector on site
during business hours.

"I think we could get it all worked out in mediation," Mr. Calabria
said. "I think these are problems that can be solved. It's nothing
that's not fixable. It's a never-ending stream of complaints, and it
seems to come from the same small group."

But City Manager Curtis Snow told the council Monday that the
wastewater violations were only one nuisance they could use to
justify referral to the Board of Adjustments.

Other allegations include bad odors, uncovered containers of
byproducts outside the plant, storage of livestock without
sufficient space, trucks driving in the city uncovered and at times
dripping liquids, and a general loss in the quality of life in the
neighborhood. An investigation by Kaufman police in July and early
August found all to be true except the allegations about the trucks.

"The facts of the matter are that even though Dallas Crown does
everything it can to protect the food processing for human
consumption, the company is less diligent about ancillary processes
for the by-products," Mr. Snow wrote in a report. "What the
neighbors are complaining about is Dallas Crown's handling of those
parts of the animals that are not for consumption."

Robert Eldridge, who has argued that his mostly poor, black
neighborhood has been a victim of environmental racism because of
the plant, said Tuesday, "It's a good start. ... Our neighborhood
was very appreciative of their actions. But we're not going to stop.
Next we're going to start working on the people in Washington, so
when it goes away, it goes away for good."

There are two tracks about to proceed in Congress against horse
slaughtering. The first began this summer, when the U.S. House
overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the annual spending bill for
the Agriculture Department to bar money from being spent to inspect
horse-slaughtering operations. It will probably be introduced in the
Senate after Congress returns from recess Sept. 6. But those
spending measures would result in only a one-year ban. A permanent
ban might be introduced in both chambers, also after Sept. 6.

E-mail jgetz@dallasnews.com

Latest news...........

The Board of Adjustments is supposed to meet on September 27th, but may meet earlier due to a board member going out of town.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2005-09-01/news/news.html

All the Pretty Horses...
...Are Slaughtered at Dallas Crown.
Now a small town is fighting back. At the Dallas Crown horse-slaughtering plant, located alongside a poor but friendly black neighborhood in nearby Kaufman, the specter of death spreads far past the guarded boundaries of the industrial facility. Horse hides flop off a rickety conveyor belt and lie for hours in an uncovered trailer, unleashing a vicious, far-reaching odor that swarms up and down the narrow residential streets. Discarded bones lie in an adjacent backyard, perhaps thrown over by Crown employees or licked dry and left by stray dogs that gnawed off the meat when no one was looking. Then there are the horses. You can hear them rustle and neigh nervously as they await a trip to a sterile pen to face the lethal bolt that will pound them in the skull.

Slaughtering around 300 horses a week, Dallas Crown has enraged animal lovers and local residents alike. The plant ships horsemeat overseas for human consumption and processes leftover parts for scraps. But the grim and unusual task of its business is only half the story. For at least five years, the plant 30 miles east of Dallas has frequently clogged the local sewer system with blood, grease, hay and manure and has failed to pay nearly 30 fines levied for alleged violations of city ordinances. Now, after years of apathy, angry city officials have taken steps to close the plant, belatedly fulfilling the dreams of the long-ignored African-American residents of the tiny Boggy Bottoms neighborhood, which takes its name after the mud that once gathered on top of their unpaved streets.

"I can't describe the smell. It's that bad," says Stella Jones, an elderly woman who has lived in Boggy Bottoms for 15 years. "That smell keeps me sick all the time. Every day you can smell it. I wish the owners of the plant and the people who work there can come here and wake up to it."

That's unlikely, but two weeks ago the Kaufman City Council made a strong statement nonetheless when it unanimously recommended that the city's Zoning Board of Adjustments decide whether the plant has violated the city's nuisance laws. The vote followed stinging reports from the Kaufman city manager, public works director and police chief, who chronicled in individual reports how Dallas Crown allegedly breaks the law and mocks the surrounding neighbors' modest expectations of a life without horse stench.

"I'm not sure the only solution isn't for them to pack up and move," says Police Chief James Smith, who doubles as a preacher. "To be on the safe side, there is no other solution--not one that's going to stem this growing resentment."

With second-term Mayor Paula Bacon calling for the facility to be shut down, many residents expect the zoning board to vote to rescind the plant's non-conforming use designation that allows it to operate against current zoning laws. Also, next fall the U.S. Senate is expected to take up legislation already passed in the House that could force horse-slaughtering plants like Dallas Crown out of business. For now, though, the company's lawyer vows a fight.

"There is an ongoing attempt by the mayor to manipulate the city to interfere with their business," says attorney Mark Calabria, who donated money to a political action committee that funded one of the mayor's recent opponents. "She's been quite open and notorious about it."

A tall, blond woman in her mid-50s with a healthy streak of righteous indignation, Mayor Paula Bacon has, in fact, been a lively critic of Dallas Crown and the first local leader to take the pleas of Kaufman's tiny Boggy Bottoms neighborhood seriously. Two weeks ago, Boggy Bottoms resident Robert Eldridge gave a tour of the outside perimeter of Dallas Crown to the mayor. Under a mid-afternoon sun, walking amongst weeds, brush and discarded horse bones, she snapped digital pictures of an uncovered trailer on the grounds storing horse hides, a practice that has beckoned rats and dogs and is yet another potential violation of a city ordinance by Dallas Crown. Later, when a stern Dallas Crown employee stood outside the plant's front gate and warned this reporter that he was dangerously close to trespassing, she firmly informed the employee that the city owned the land approaching the fence and that anyone can come right up to it and take a look inside--which she then proceeded to do. When the man dismissed her, she told him she was the mayor. Nervously, he grabbed his cell phone and was heard explaining what had just happened to someone who sounded like his supervisor.

"They are a nuisance by their very nature situated next to a residential neighborhood," she says of Dallas Crown. "And while they're capable of complying with our regulations and ordinances, they disregard them. They're a stigma to our town and a hindrance to development."

Dallas Crown has at least 29 unpaid summonses at $2,000 each, most of which are for too much blood and grease in the plant's wastewater. Clinically referred to as biochemical oxygen demand, Dallas Crown's nasty blend of discharge can strain the local wastewater treatment plant. Last year, the company threw out the city's outside inspector, who had repeatedly cited it for violations, and enlisted its own lab to perform the testing. Now Calabria says that Dallas Crown, which according to court records has grossed in the neighborhood of $10 million annually, won't pay the $58,000 in fines without a fight.

"We took the position that the citations that were issued were not justified," he says. "We'd be more than happy to litigate that in a court of law, and if it's determined we have to pay them, we will."

Calabria, who lives in a nice section of Kaufman out of sight of his client's business, is not afraid to play hardball, suggesting that the neighbors' concerns about Dallas Crown are overblown.

"It's been a horse-processing plant for 15 years," he says. "And it just seems unusual to me that all these people find these living conditions to be hell."

Eldridge, a middle-aged black man who has lived in Boggy Bottoms his whole life, says that for years no one listened to the pleas of a traditionally black neighborhood. In any case, he says, if Calabria doubts the noxious odor that spews from the plant, he can check it out for himself.

"If Mr. Calabria wants to bring his family and live here, we have a place for him," Eldridge says, only partly in jest. Eldridge offers the same Southern hospitality to the plant's owner, who lives in Belgium.

While Eldridge enjoys taunting Dallas Crown through the press, the presence of a horse-slaughtering plant in his beloved neighborhood is no joke. A respiratory therapist who formed a small real-estate holding company with his wife of 22 years, Eldridge has bought several parcels of land, most of them in his immediate neighborhood, at tax sales. Across the street from his well-kept home, he owns a 3.5-acre lot that he'd like to develop into a small apartment complex for the elderly. He says he wants to help the poor neighborhood become a better place to live, and the first step is to kick Dallas Crown out.

"I know these people are going to fight," says Eldridge. "They've got a lot to lose, but so do I."

Calabria says that Eldridge's opposition to Dallas Crown is financially motivated, although the lifelong resident is hardly the only person to cite the plant's deleterious effect on the neighborhood's quality of life. Tonya Runnels wakes up early in the morning to commute to her job at an auto parts store. Sometimes, she can hear employees of Dallas Crown yelling at the horses as they are walking them to the killing pen just across the street from her home.

"The odor and the rumbling," she says, are what most bother her about living so close to Dallas Crown. "You can hear the horses beating up against the stall."

James Smith, the police chief and the preacher, corroborated the residents' gripes about the plant after his officers monitored Dallas Crown for a month. He reported that the plant regularly left waste material uncovered in trailers and that he and his officers detected "significant foul odors."

In addition to the nuisance it presents to its immediate neighbors, Crown and other businesses like it have also drawn fire for their treatment of the horses. While company officials and even veterinary groups say that the plant provides a humane end for many old and disabled horses, animal lovers claim that the horses agonize in their last moments. Jerry Finch, founder of the equine rescue group Habitat for Horses, says that horses are executed for slaughter the same way that cows are: with a bolt driven into their foreheads.

"The problem is that, unlike cows, horses move their heads a lot," he says. "We have film that shows horses trying to escape that shot. The law says that they're supposed to be rendered unconscious by one shot, but we have film that shows the horses are hit three to five times."

Without delving into the details of his client's work, Calabria says plainly that Dallas Crown operates in a strictly controlled, very regulated business. A USDA inspector is also on the premises during working hours. Still, he refused to allow the Dallas Observer to tour the facility.

Although sympathetic to the plight of the horses that graze around them, Dallas Crown's immediate neighbors just want to have a chance at living an ordinary residential life. They want their kids to be able to play outside. They don't want to fend off rats and snakes drawn to the plant. They don't want to smell decaying horse hides left uncovered under a blazing summer sun.

"I was born here and I'll probably die here," Eldridge says. "A man's home is his castle, and you have to fight for it." --Matt Pulle

I have opened a chat room on Pal Talk (it's free). The room is listed under Social Issues and is called Ban Horse Slaughter. If anyone is interested in open chat instead of message boards, please feel free to download Pal Talk Messenger and come in. Perhaps this will aid in our communication on an open basis. Until the horses are safe, we have to do all that we can to help. Thanks!

As if Dallas Crown did not have enough problems with the town of Kaufman and the Ensign/Byrd amendment, now the state has appealed the decision against them in favor of the slaughter houses. This is from Anne Diamond (an appropriate name). I have the pdf if anyone wants it. These people have evaded their well deserved fates so long that nobody is taking any chances.

John Holland
---------------------------------------------

We have this day filed our Notice of Appeal in this case. Copy of the electronically filed notice is attached hereto (open with Adobe).

Ann Diamond
Chief, Litigation
Assistant Criminal District Attorney
Office of the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney
401 W. Belknap Street
Fort Worth, TX 76102
817.884.1233

I would like the pdf if you could send it to me,
Thank You

Donna

Donna,

Send me an email mentioning the pdf so I will have your address. Mine is
hollandtech @ earthlink . net (remove spaces)

Thanks
John