The HBO show "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" will reportedly feature a piece about horse slaughter on Monday, May 12 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

From what we have been told, the producers worked with anti-slaughter advocates on the piece. "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" has a history of doing pro-animal stories.

If you get HBO please tune in, and then write to the show's producers with your feedback.

You can send an e-mail to "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" here:
http://www.hbo.com/corpinfo/faq/realsportsfaq.shtml

Also, feel free to discuss this show on our message boards:
http://uan.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/995100175/m/5611002203

If you miss the show on Monday, HBO will air it again periodically throughout the month of May.

Please take the time to review the other post sections on horse slaughter. We must bring the slaughter houses back to the US where we can monitor them. Watching the show by Bryan Gumbel should have brought that issue clear to light. We must stop the birthing rates and we must bring the houses back to US soil so the horses do not receive a worse state in Mexico!

I would like to dispell the myth of slaughter being a profitable option of disposal and therefore it encourages "rampant" breeding. We horse breeders, trainers, and horse dealers have been accused of being irresponsible because we can "make a buck" sending our horses to kill. Slaughter always has and always will be a product of someone's other plan gone south. The feedlots and loose horse pens are full of horses who have more value by the pound than for something else. Let me as a life long horse dealer, something else is always more profitable. Now or before.

Here are some numbers to support this. These are the figures I use in my own horse program. I live in a part of the country where feed is probably as cheap and plentiful as it can be had anywhere so these are fairly bottom line figures.

To raise a foal to weaning age I have always figured my break even cost is somewhere around $800. Can I kill him or put him in a feedlot as a feeder horse for that? Ummm no, never could, never will be able to. No profit there.

To raise that same foal to riding, saleable three year old, right around $1,800. Now in the best days of weigh horse prices a number one killer was worth just a hair under $1,100 and that's been back at least 10 years ago. No richs to be had there either.

Slaughter is and always has been the horse industry's way of culling the less valuable. We are now starting, I repeat starting, to see to the affect of a culling system which has been in decline for about 8 years now. Or in horse terms about 1 generation. And the further this culling system is compromised the more animals will be in the breeding pool which shouldn't be. The more people who will be able to afford to breed horses that shouldn't. What is going to be left being tax deduction breeders and people raising horses as pets, because they always wanted to and they want the kids to see the miracle of life. Have we heard that somewhere before?

The middle class working horse people who for years produced those mid priced, family safe, easy on the eyes, $2,000 to $7,500 horses all of you want for your back yard are the ones being forced out.

Or to personalize that aspect for you. I have a good friend/client who showed the high point pleasure horse in the state of Wis. in 1966. She can still remember the mares reg. number. She put the mare's last daughter down last winter. I have ridden and sold her stock for years. We have both made money on them. The started young horses have gone to several states and varied walks of life after they were sold, most at reputable auctions. She has probably around 30 head of horse running in various pastures on her farm. She owns her farm. She has always studied correct conformation. These are decent horses. The way things are now she can't even get out without doing something so horrible she can't deal with it. We will try to market the young riders. She is going to cut her stud. I will ride him and sell him as a gelding. The old broodmares, she'll have shot in the pasture and hire a dozer. And in the meantime istead of being treated like a stockman going through a rough patch by her neighbors she is ridiculed by the neighbors for having all those "worthless" horses eating grass and feed which could be making money feeding cattle.

Then to replace this woman who has studied raising nice horses for what they could do and produce we will have a "rescue" rehoming culls which should more than likely never been born. Horses who for some reason had no more value than by the pound. And someone will have to think "wouldn't a baby be cute". And the cycle of worthless will continue.

The horse industry is going through a time of deep correction right now. We are at a peroid when an effective culling system is vital to sustain the welfare of the entire industry. The welfare and humane treatment of the stock in the industry is dependant on the health and viability of the industry that produces it.

I don't have satellite TV so will not see the real sports broadcast. I am assuming it will be directed at the casting off of racehorses to slaughterhouses. So with that in mind, do any of you no matter your views on slaughter think changing the laws will make the people in racing feel any differently toward their also rans? Can you legislate the way they feel?