A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is advising the Obama administration to maintain opposition to a proposal to kill 45,000 wild horses or send them to Mexican slaughterhouses, calling the potential extermination “monstrous.”
“We were shocked to hear that the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board recommended that the Department of Interior consider euthanizing 45,000 wild horses or offering horses for sale without limitation,” said a Monday letter sent by Florida Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan and Democratic New Mexico Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham. The letter was addressed to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze.
“It is disgraceful that the board, whose purpose is to provide sound advice on the management of wild horses, would even consider euthanizing these horses as a plausible management technique,” the letter added. “We welcome recent statements by BLM that you will not euthanize or otherwise put the horses at risk of slaughter, and we encourage the agency to maintain this position and seek other herd management techniques.
“Furthermore, following the board’s recommendation and offering horses for sale without restriction opens the door for the slaughter of wild horses, a horrifically cruel practice that is opposed by a majority of Americans,” the pair wrote.
The National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board, which is composed of representatives for wild horse and burro advocacy groups and is tasked with advising BLM on land management practices, voted in September to recommend the extermination, though BLM issued a preliminary rejection of the proposal amid outcry from the public. An annual congressional budget rider also prevents the agency from using funds to send horses to slaughter, a reality that would likely need to change in order to move forward with the plan.
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The letter subsequently described the road to foreign slaughterhouses. “Horses are shipped for long periods of time without food, water, or rest in crowded trucks in which the animals are often seriously injured or killed in transit. Horses are skittish by nature due to their heightened fight or flight response, which makes accurate stunning difficult.
“As a result, horses often endure repeated blows and sometimes remain conscious during dismemberment; this is rarely a quick, painless death. Congress has stopped the slaughter of wild horses since 2009 by preventing the BLM from using federal funds to send any American wild horse to slaughter,” the two noted.
The administration this year approved the construction of slaughterhouses on American soil, the first of which are expected in New Mexico, Missouri and Iowa. While horse meat cannot be sold for human consumption in the United States, it may be shipped to Mexico, and, critics have noted, potentially shipped back to the United States as meat filler.
“We strongly urge DOI to reject the board’s recommendations and hold true to your statement that these horses will not be euthanized or put at risk of slaughter,” the lawmakers wrote on Monday. “We also request that the agency commit to a timeline for the expansion of immunocontraceptive use on rangelands in the West and report back to Congress on their progress.”
