They Abandon Horses Don't They?
LA GRANDE -- Ranchers in the old West sometimes contended with horse thieves, but in the modern West the opposite is occurring -- more and more people are abandoning unwanted domestic horses on ranches and public lands.
The high price of hay -- now bringing upward of $160 per ton in some areas -- and the closure this fall of the nation's last domestic horsemeat processing facility in Illinois may be partly to blame.
At least nine horses have been turned loose on Wannie MacKenzie's ranch north of Jordan Valley in the past 18 to 24 months. And the Malheur County cattleman is bracing for the appearance of more old and hungry horses as cash-strapped owners in Idaho's Treasure Valley run out of winter hay.
"It's a huge problem," MacKenzie said. "What am I gonna do with them? I don't want 300 head of horses on my ranch."
Unwanted horses also are being released at livestock sale yards, including the Intermountain Livestock Market near La Grande, where one turned up last month, and on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land.
"We are hearing stories from all over of people abandoning horses" at livestock sale yards, said Gary Conway, spokesman for the Texas-based American Quarter Horse Association.
Cavel International in DeKalb, Ill., the nation's last horse slaughter facility, closed in September after a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling. Two Texas slaughterhouses were forced to shut down earlier in the year by enforcement of a 1949 Texas law banning horsemeat plants.
The plants had slaughtered aging and unwanted horses and exported the meat to Europe and elsewhere for human consumption. Their closures were hailed by the Humane Society of the United States, the Animal Welfare Institute and other animal rights groups. But their absence leaves horse owners with fewer options for dealing with animals they have no further use for, Conway said.
Mexican connection
Closure of the plants has resulted in a 400 percent increase in shipments of U.S. horses to Mexican slaughterhouses this year, said Sally Baker, spokeswoman for the 9,000-member Association of Equine Practitioners in Lexington, Ky.
Malheur County Undersheriff Brian Wolfe has investigated the abandonment of perhaps 20 domestic horses recently, some on BLM land. He tries to identify owners and charge them with animal abandonment or animal abuse, both misdemeanors. But such investigations are difficult because 90 percent of horses are not branded.
"I think it's going to get to be a lot bigger problem than it is now," Wolfe said. "I'm almost sure of it."
Killing and processing horses for their meat -- which happened 80,000 to 100,000 times a year across the nation, according to government figures -- or having a veterinarian euthanize horses, have been common ways to deal with old or unwanted animals. After a veterinarian euthanizes the horse, the most common method of disposal is to bury it by using a backhoe or to incinerate it.
A horse carcass can't be left in the open after a vet puts the animal down because the drugs used are very potent and are dangerous to scavengers, said La Grande veterinarian Christopher J. McIlmoil.
Oregon brand inspector Rodger Huffman of La Grande said even if a horse dies of natural causes, carcasses cannot be left within a quarter-mile of running water or half a mile of a dwelling for more than 15 hours without being buried, incinerated or moved farther away.
In remote areas, horse owners sometimes forgo paying to have a vet euthanize a horse in lieu of just shooting it. MacKenzie said he can't bring himself to shoot horses abandoned on his ranch.
"Why dump it on me?" he asks. "I do not want to do that."
Legislation considered
But even trucking horses to Mexico and Canada could be coming to an end. Congress is considering a package of legislation that would prohibit killing and processing horses for human consumption or transporting them across international boundaries for that purpose.
Derek Fink, press secretary for Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., one of the legislation's sponsors, said horses are being hauled to slaughter in overcrowded trailers, abused by workers, and inhumanely killed at plants . Fink said the bills' sponsors believe horses deserve to finish out their lives in rescue facilities and equine sanctuaries, not domestic slaughter plants.
"A horse is a pet in America, it is like a dog or cat," he said.
Conway, the American Quarter Horse Association spokesman, disagrees. Too few rescue facilities and too little money are available to care for horses that had been destined for slaughter, he said. And the transportation and slaughter of horses was more humane than what is happening to them now, he said.
The debate "has definitely been framed within an urban vs. rural mindset," Baker said. She said urbanites often regard horses as "companion animals," and frown on eating horsemeat. Rural households, on the other hand, are more likely to think of horses as a "working animal," and be less concerned about sending them to slaughter.
Government-run horse processing plants in Mexico appear to do a humane job, Baker said, but she worries about transporting them there. Horses trucked through Mexico and Canada are not under the jurisdiction and standards of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the animals' humane treatment, she said.
Additionally, workers at some processing plants in Mexico don't always use methods considered humane by her organization, and some kill horses with knives, she said.
"There is no perfect answer to this problem," Conway said. "The horse processing thing certainly is not a solution for a lot of people. But it is for a lot of others."
Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle@oregonwireless.net
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1195178173302820.xml&coll=7&thispage=1
bravenet.com