Horse Slaughter Bill Narrowly Clears State SubCommittee

A measure to allow a horse slaughter plant in Tennessee moved forward in the state legislature Wednesday.

Because the federal government stopped inspecting slaughter houses for horses, those facilities are shut down nationwide. Republican Frank Niceley, of Strawberry Plains, says his bill would allow Tennessee officials to oversee a proposed slaughter plant.

Niceley says that’s better than having unwanted horses abandoned across the state.

“Horses are being treated more inhumanely now than any time during the history of the world. This is an effort to stop the inhumane treatment, and further the humane treatment of our horses.”

The executive director of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association agrees. Sam Butt says there’s a market for unwanted horses. He says making it legal to slaughter horses, to be meat in other countries, will ensure that those horses will be well-treated.

“Somebody’s that’s gonna buy a horse to transport it for processing, to get paid for that, to have a carcass, if you will, in good shape, is gonna take relatively good care of it if there’s a commodity value to it.”

People in eighty percent of the world eat horse meat, he says, and it’s not up to Tennessee to tell them they can’t.

The measure passed the House Budget Subcommittee by one vote.

WEB EXTRA
The bill is HB 1428 Niceley/SB 3688 John DeBerry.

Horse-lover Willie Nelson and Representative Nicely got into a war of words earlier this week over the measure. Nelson is backing a bill in Congress that would ban horse slaughter in the U.S.

Raelyn Nelson, Willie Nelson’s granddaughter, said her grandfather was in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, but she read a message from him:

We ride horses in Americas, we don’t eat them. My friends and I supported efforts that successfully shut down foreign-owned horse slaughterhouses in the United States. And we continue to work to pass the federal Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act, HR 503/S727, which would ban horse slaughter and prevent horses from being hauled outside the United States for slaughter. This must be what Representative Frank Niceley was referring to at a recent… House Agricultural Committee meeting, when he said , “Willie Nelson thought it was the humane thing to do to shut down the horse processing plants.” Showing compassion? Trying to end equine abuse? Yes. That’s the right thing to do, and I will continue to keep fighting for America’s horses. …Representative Niceley is sponsoring a bill… to allow a horse slaughter house in Tennessee. He wants folks to believe that it is more humane to allow buyers to travel around our great country purchasing healthy, wanted horses, and haul them to Tennessee to be slaughtered for human consumption. ..Who benefits? Foreign-owned companies and high-end diners overseas. This is the sly way this awful industry operates. At auctions where horse rescue operators are trying to save lives, killer buyers routinely outbid them. But maybe, just maybe, that’s about to change. The ugly facts about horse slaughter are coming to light. Representative Niceley claimed that by closing horse slaughter plants in the U.S., horses are being abandoned all over the country. That’s not true.

Nelson argues the same number of horses is dying because they’re being shipped to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico instead.

Members of the subcommittee chimed in with their own experiences. Rep. Richard Montgomery said he had sold some cattle at a sale recently and came back to his livestock trailer to find two horses had been left in it.

Niceley said at least four horses had been left at his farm. He did not say they were all abandoned.

Nelson’s daughter, Amy Nelson, answered one committee member who referred to the “humane” killing of animals at a slaughterhouse.

“Slaughter is never a humane alternative. And as heart-breaking as it is to have to take your horse out and shoot him, it’s even more heartbreaking to put him in a double-decker trailer and haul him off, without food or water,
Whether it be across state lines, or whether it be from Oregon to Tennessee, if we get a slaughter plant here, they’re gonna be going through the… same …same horrible… They’re gonna meet the same horrible fate.”