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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: June 2007

Horse slaughter for human consumption halted

 

SPRINGFIELD, AUSTIN, WASHINGTON D.C.--Horse slaughter for human consumption appeared to be ended within the U.S. on May 24, as result of legislation signed that day by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, killed by the Texas legislature the same day, and allowed to stand without comment by the U.S. Supreme Court two days earlier.

Illinois House Bill 1711, introduced by state representative Bob Molaro and state senator John Cullerton, prohibits killing horses for human consumption, effective immediately. Cavel International had operated the last horsemeat slaughtering plant in the U.S. in DeKalb, Illinois.

The Cavel slaughterhouse was closed in March 2007 after U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture violated the National Environmental Policy Act by allowing the company to pay for USDA inspections, after Congress in 2005 cut off federal funding in an attempt to stop horse slaughter.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 3, 2007 allowed Cavel to resume paying for inspections, and thereby to resume killing horses, while pursuing appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court on May 22, 2007 rejected a horse slaughter industry appeal of a January 2007 ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the constitutionality of a 1949 Texas law against horse slaughter for human consumption. The Texas law was not enforced until more than 50 years after passage. An attempt to undo the law, introduced into the Texas Senate after the appellate ruling, did not advance.

Horse slaughter industry representatives argued that slaughtering is a needed means of disposing of old, injured, and ill horses. Responded Humane Society of the U.S. senior vice president for legislation Mike Markarian, "USDA statistics show that more than 92 percent of horses slaughtered in the U.S. are not old and infirm, but are in good condition."

Markarian urged Congress to pass federal anti-horse slaughter legislation which would curtail exporting live horses to be killed abroad. U.S. slaughterhouses killed 108,000 horses in 2006; 30,000 were sent to slaughter in Canada or Mexico..