Last week, the last operational horse slaughter plant in the United States was shut down. You can view a news clip about it here:
http://video.nbc5.com/player/?id=86731

These closures may only be temporary, so it is still important to pass the federal bill to make slaughtering horses for human consumption illegal permanently.

Hi Karen

I have been following the Horse Slaughter Prevention act pretty closely and I was so happy about the closures. My issue is, and it could just be me, is that in our local community forums we have a bunch of horse people who are blaming the closing of the slaughter houses for all of the horse abuse cases that we are hearing about. I know people have the right to their own opinion but it just burns my you know what that they keep posting that it is PETA people and ASPCA people and people like me who are causing these horses to be abused. I was just wondering if you knew where I could find some good, solid facts to throw at them. I am just upset that horse people feel it is better to send a horse to slaughter then to humanely euthanize and if you cannot afford to humanely euthanize then you cannot afford to care for your horse in the first place is my opinion. Guess I am just venting more then anything. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks for listening.

Guess I jumped the gun...I just figured out that there were posts already that may answer my plea. Should have learned how to use the forums first. Sorry and Thanks.

Michelle, don't apologize and thank you for posting! Your questions and points are very valid.

We agree with what you're saying - the cost to humanely euthanize a horse is paltry compared to the cost of caring for a horse. Horse slaughter does not provide a "necessary service", as the industry and slaughter proponents want you to believe.

I believe that the problem is that understanding what would motivate people to make up such falsehoods, and understanding why there is no link between increased abuse and decreased slaughter, are both (somewhat) complicated concepts.

For general information, you can view our "Myths and Facts" page here:
http://www.uan.org/index.cfm?navid=256

Horse slaughter was made illegal in California nearly 10 years ago, and horse abuse and theft have actually decreased! Here is a link to a paper that describes this connection and the "horse surplus" myth in much more detail:
http://www.horse-protection.org/pdf/TheRelationshipofAbusetoSlaughter.pdf (PDF)

Lastly, I think the simplest argument is that horse abuse does not occur overnight. Any abuse cases that are occuring now can not be the result of the closure of the slaughter plants, since that has happened only very recently.

Michelle, if you run into any points that you need help addressing, please don't hesitate to start a new thread and post it here! That is what we're here for. Thanks for all your efforts.