Tennessee Horse Slaughter Bill Withdrawn!

The Tennessee legislature makes a good move by putting down a horse slaughter bill. Now if they would just have the guts to take on the Medical Marijuana legislation instead of delaying it by saying they would 'study' the issue.

By Laura Allen 

Horse Slaughter Update April 28, 2010: Following a hearing yesterday before the full House Finance, Ways and Means, Tennessee state Rep. Frank Niceley withdrew his pro-horse slaughter bill, H.B. 1428, and it is now dead for this legislative session.

John Holland, founder and president of the Equine Welfare Alliance, and Paula Bacon, former mayor of Kaufman, Texas, site of one of the last horse slaughter plants in the U.S., testified in opposition to the bill.

Famed singer and songwriter, Willie Nelson and his daughter, Amy Nelson, and granddaughter, Raelyn Nelson, were at the hearing in opposition to this bill but did not testify before the committee.

Paula Bacon described that she was mayor of Kaufman “during part of 27 years we spent trying to deal with this horse slaughter plant.” She told the committee that a horse slaughter facility was a “burden to taxpayers…a stigma” and almost forced the city to spend “millions to upgrade ..the waste water treatment plant”.

Bacon said that building a horse slaughter facility was “very definitely not desirable economic development.” She said the facility does not create good jobs, just a handful of low paying, dangerous jobs. She described the burden on the local hospital because of the horse slaughter plant employees were often injured, even losing limbs.


She said the city derived no sales tax revenue from the horse slaughter plant. Bacon described that the $1600 in property taxes collected each year equaled about “2 weeks of a month paid in legal fees as we wrangled with this company that refused to comply with environmental laws.” She said income tax records showed in its last year of operation in the U.S., the company paid just $5 in federal income taxes on $12 million in sales and over a five year period paid only .3% of gross sales in taxes. 

Bacon showed the committee 1 ½ years worth of violations of the facility’s waste water treatment permit. She noted the permit allowed the facility to release about eight times the sewage permitted other business, yet the company was still often in violation, releasing waste and blood, that overran the town’s wastewater treatment facility.

Bacon said since the closing of the horse slaughter plant by the court in 2007, the town has not needed to proceed with a $6 million+ upgrade to its waste water treatment facility.

Bacon told the committee they would be better off having lead smeltering plants or sex-related businesses in their communities than a horse slaughter plant.

John Holland told the committee “If you get nothing else out of this, you heard how horse slaughter plants closed in 2007 and it caused problems for the horses. This is not true.” He pointed out that horse slaughter remained available in Canada and Mexico and approximately the same number of horses were shipped there as had been slaughtered in the U.S.

Holland pointed out, “There are lots and lots of drugs in these horses. …Because [horsemeat] is sold to foreign countries [for human consumption, our inspectors], looked the other way.” Holland described a study led by Dr. Ann Marini that revealed bute, given to horses like aspirin, is a deadly poison, a carcinogen. Bute never breaks down and remains a danger to consumers. He described the new European Union regulations which beginning this July will require certification that slaughtered horses were drug free for 6 months and that they had never ingested certain drugs. Holland explained that by July, 2013, the EU will require that horses must be tracked from birth. “As of that point, ” said Holland, “none of [the meat] from American horses could go to the EU.” Americans don’t track horses or, for the most part, the drugs given to them. As Holland, explained, “The horses just show up at auction and no one knows [ their history].”

Holland pointed out that though slaughter rates remained the same after the U.S. plants shut down, in 2009 there was a 20% drop in horse slaughter and 125 this year so far because of slowing demand. Holland said, “This is because the EU is figuring out the danger. Europeans are figuring out horse meat is not health food as they were told and instead they are eating New Jersey race horses.” He described it as “irresponsible” for anyone to build a horse slaughter facility in the U.S. given the danger.

Holland closed his testimony by noting that the horse slaughter facility in Canada, Natural Valley, was closed last year by the government for dropping large amounts of blood in rivers with no proper disposal. He said the horse slaughter facility cost the economy of that community $42 million.

Source: Thomas Paine's Corner 


More: Animal Law Coalition  

The absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth"

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. ~St. Francis of Assisi


If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. ~C.S. Lewis

Factory Farming Atrocities

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Kosher ritual

Hat tip for this video to Brian

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions (9 billion in the U.S. alone in 1996) and eats them. This in turn kills man by the millions, because eating all these animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth". ~C. David Coats

Tales of Abused Animals

Our local news site, CannonWire, broke this animal abuse story here and here and here. The Nashville media has picked it up and made it a feature for tonight. Thanks to them. These stories need to be told.


I'm going to speculate that this case was a symptom of the current economic situation. In my travels over the last couple of years in the middle Tennessee deep rural areas I've seen the same thing. People are poor, they can't sell the horses at any price and the animals slowly starve for lack of alternatives.

The mistreatment of animals gets attention when it's about the poor horses or dogs but the abuse and slaughter every day in factory farms so we can gorge ourselves with cheap meat is rarely mentioned. The media is silent when the abuse is 'acceptable,' traditional and sanctioned.

My comment to the wire on this.....

I'm encouraged by the concern and number of comments on this animal abuse story. It's truly something that should not happen.

But I'm wondering how many would feel the concern if the story was about the 10 billion animals slaughtered each year in this country, 99% of them in factory farms where every single animal is abused.

Examples:

Hatchery abuse...

Horrors of a turkey farm...Happy Thanksgiving

Downer cattle

inside the horse slaughter house

I could go on and on but I hear a $1 value burger at McDonald's calling. yum

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Cannon Courier article and photos here.

Vivisection - The Hidden Genocide

Along with animal factory farming and the resulting carnage and environmental degradation, vivisection is an issue that gets buried among many 'progressives' and 'conservatives' who would rather look the other way.

Jason Miller - He no longer heard the cries of the animals or saw the flowing blood....

Millions of nonhuman animals are vivisected every year to ensure our “safety” when we take prescription drugs. Just how safe are we? Consider that adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are the fourth leading cause of death, 15% of hospital admissions are related to ADRs, prescription drugs kill over 100,000 people every year (more than street drugs), and ADRs cost us over $130 billion in medical expenses every year.

Despite its demonstrably abysmal results and despite exciting breakthroughs in genetics and other areas of science, and the rapid development of technologies that make vivisection antiquated and obsolete, it persists, not because it brings “truth,” but rather because it is highly profitable up and down throughout the long chain of “research.” There is tremendous peer-pressure and academic inertia to continue confining and torturing other sentient beings without their consent for several reasons, but aside from the facts that vivisection is a deeply entrenched orthodoxy which is handed down from one generation of researchers to the next and that nonhuman animal research is easily published (no small incentive to practice it in the ‘publish or perish’ environments of universities), vivisection generates and protects income. Vivisection continues to be highly regarded and heavily promoted within the mainstream medical and scientific communities, as many universities have come to depend mightily upon the multi-million dollar grants they receive to fund nonhuman animal research, even that which is frivolous or redundant.

Big Pharma, one of the largest supporters and beneficiaries of nonhuman animal research, uses its significant influence—an influence derived from deep pockets and even deeper incestuous relationships with legislators, government regulators, peer-reviewed medical journals, publicly funded institutions, and doctors—to sustain the lie that it would be impossible to innovate and market new prescription drugs without vivisection. {more}

Good Ol' Humans Club

Who's Afraid of Jerry Vlasak?

European Parliament: MEPs Buckle Under Vivisection Industry Pressure

Great apes suffer setback in EU animal testing vote



Getting away with Murder: Whatever happened to 'above all, do no harm'?