Great news: The U.S. House and Senate both passed the FY2016 Appropriations bill today. The language blocking funding for domestic horse slaughter inspections and addressing lax animal-welfare oversight at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center—both high-priority issues for the ASPCA—was retained in the final version. The bill was delivered to President Obama, who signed it this afternoon.
This post was originally published on December 16, 2015.
We know you’ll agree that horses aren’t food. We don’t raise them so we can eat them, and horses hold a special place in our country’s heritage. While no horse slaughterhouses currently operate in the United States, the threat of their return looms constantly and few realize that approximately 150,000 American horses are trucked across our borders every year to be brutally slaughtered for food.
The words “horse auction” may not mean much to you, but for thousands of American equines, they are a death sentence. At these weekly events, horses are auctioned off to buyers who can use them for any purpose, which means that kill buyers—those who make money selling horses for their meat—are lurking around every corner.
During today’s markup of the 2016 agriculture spending bill, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved the anti-horse slaughter amendment offered by Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) and co-sponsored by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chris Coons (D-DE). The Udall-Kirk Amendment would prevent the U.S.
Guest blog by Nancy Perry, Senior Vice President of ASPCA Government Relations.
Guest blog by Brianne Goutal, a highly respected top international equestrian on the United States show jumping team. She represents Cloverleaf Farm, Remarkable Farm and her own stable, Brianne Goutal LLC. She is currently ranked 10th in the United States and 54thin the world and is the only rider to have won all four coveted equitation finals for junior riders, the crown being the ASPCA Maclay National Championship in 2006.
