Update Mar. 24: The North Dakota Senate has voted 33-8 in favor of this bill, H.B. 1496. 

Update Mar. 22: The Senate Committee has approved H.B. 1496 by a vote of 11-3. The full Senate could vote on the bill as early as today.

The bill has been returned to the House for approval of the amendments passed by the Senate. Those amendments are discussed below.

For more on this bill and talking points for legislators, read Animal Law Coalition's earlier reports below. 

Update Mar. 12: The North Dakota , H.B. 1496, has been amended to appropriate $50,000 rather than $75,000 or $100,000 as initially drafted.

There was an amendment to  require anyone who seeks an injunction to stop  the construction or operation of a horse slaughter facility to post a bond representing 20% of the cost of the facility or its operation. 

The provision also said if the action for injunction failed, the plaintiff must pay all financial losses as well as the facility's attorney's fees incurred in defending that action.   

That provision which is similar to a pending Montana bill was struck down.

The proposed $50,000 appropriation must be matched dollar for dollar. Some funding will come from a fee of $5.00 per slaughtered horse.

The amended bill would also create an advisory board to, well, advise, about the "study". This group would have up to $5,000 of taxpayer money for expenses.   Some nice dinners and junkets, no doubt.

Once the treasury is reimbursed, if it is, monies from the fund collecting the $5.00 per slaughtered horse would be distributed to Dickinson State University and North Dakota State University for equine programs.  Interestingly, grants could be distributed to "public or private entities conducting equine research or offering hippotherapy to individuals with disabilities."  Equine research?

There is also pending a resolution that has passed the Senate, SCR 4021 is now  before the House Agriculture Committee. This resolution like others introduced in other states, calls for the defeat of the federal anti-horse slaughter bill, H.R. 503. Fax 701-328-3615 or email lcouncil@nd.gov the Committee and urge them to vote NO on SCR 4021. Find and write or call individual committee members here.

Update Mar. 4, 2009: The North Dakota House has approved this bill.

Update Feb. 7, 2009: The N.D. House Agriculture Committee unanimously approved H.B. 1496, calling for the state to spend $75,000 of taxpayer dollars for a "study" of the feasibility of opening a horse slaughter facility in the state. The bill calls for study of markets for horse meat, available funding and applicable laws.

No one appeared in opposition to this hearing, leaving horse slaughter proponents free to make unsupported claims that "there is a minimum of 170,000 unwanted horses" in the U.S. and a slaughter facility is necessary to keep  horses from suffering. These proponents described the proposed facility as "humane" and profitable.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but no one was at the hearing to oppose this propaganda from horse slaughter enthusiasts who want tax dollars to subsidize a sleazy industry that is profitable only to foreign investors.

The industry does not depend on "unwanted horses". There are no "unwanted horses" roaming around because of a lack of horse slaughter facilities. Horse slaughter is driven by a demand for horsemeat as a delicacy in a few other countries. If everyone who consumes horsemeat stopped eating it, there would be no horse slaughter. It has nothing to do with "unwanted horses", a myth perpetuated by these proponents.

The profitability of this sordid practice to its foreign investors also depends on animal cruelty. It is a horrific, brutal process, and anyone who says otherwise is simply untruthful.       

Original report: While the rest of the United States is struggling economically, especially state and local governments, hit hard by what has been called the worst recession since the Great Depression, money seems to be overflowing the coffers of North Dakota. 

State Rep. Rod Froelich and Sen. Joe Miller propose that the state's Department of Commerce spend $100,000 studying the feasibility of opening an "equine processing facility" aka horse slaughter house in that state.  Their proposal is contained in a bill, H.B. 1496, which they are asking the state legislature to approve. 

The bill explains that the costly study would involve examining the markets for horse meat and other products from horses, the applicable laws, and available funding.

These legislators are surely simply stand ins for the horse slaughter industry. This industry and its highly paid lobbyists are actually trying to convince North Dakota citizens that this is something they should do to eliminate unwanted horses and bring jobs to their state.

In fact, this industry wants North Dakota taxpayers to subsidize its business, provide the industry with a taxpayer subsidized horse slaughter house. Why else study it at taxpayer expense? 

North Dakota will not benefit from opening a horse slaughter house. Even when there were horse slaughter houses in the U.S., they were part of a horse meat industry that was only 0.001% of the U.S. meat industry. The U.S. horse slaughterhouses were all foreign-owned. They paid little in income taxes. One facility paid $5 in federal taxes on $12 million in sales. These slaughter houses paid no export taxes, meaning the U.S. government effectively subsidized the sale of horse meat to consumers generally in Asia and Europe.

A study is not necessary to tell the people of North Dakota that horse meat is not consumed in the U.S. It is not used in the manufacture of pet food, and very few zoos use horse meat at all. Horse meat is an expensive delicacy served in fine restaurants primarily in parts of Asia and Europe.   

When there were horse slaughter houses in the U.S., the communities where they were located found they operated in violation of environmental and other laws, dumping waste illegally, for example.

There is no benefit here to the people of North Dakota, economic or otherwise. Any profits from this brutal activity will go into the pockets of foreign investors.

Horse slaughter is also not a means of euthanizing "unwanted horses". This is a myth perpetuated by the horse slaughter industry.  Horse slaughter is a multi million dollar a year business that is driven by a demand for horse meat. Kill buyers buy horses at auction for slaughter, and the USDA has said over 92% of American horses slaughtered, are healthy, not old, sick, injured, or neglected. These horses were not unwanted; they were simply sold at auction, and their owners had no control over who purchased them.  Without the kill buyers who skulk around horse auctions, looking for the best potential horse meat, most of these horses would be purchased by others or end up in rescues or sanctuaries.  

As John Holland, a free lance writer and researcher on horse slaughter, has explained, "Kill buyers do not go around the country like dog catchers gathering ‘unwanted horses' as a public service." 

As Americans Against Horse Slaughter points out, "Just over 100,000 horses were slaughtered in the U.S. in 2006. If slaughter were no longer an option and these horses were rendered or buried instead, it would represent a small increase in the number of horse being disposed of in this manner  - an increase that the current infrastructure can certainly sustain. Humane euthanasia and carcass disposal is highly affordable and widely available. The average cost of having a horse humanely euthanized and safely disposing of the animal's carcass is approximately $225, while the average monthly cost of keeping a horse is approximately $200."

Also, the horse slaughter industry actually encourages the over breeding of horses. Because owners can make money from the brutal slaughter of their horses, they have an incentive to over breed.  As Paul Sorvino put it, "37% of those horses are going to be slaughtered because they couldn't run fast enough....So, it's run for your life."  If the slaughter of horses for human consumption is illegal, there is no reward for over breeding.  

Sadly, pro-slaughter groups have disseminated disinformation in the media to convince the public that without horse slaughter, there will be large numbers of abandoned, abused and neglected horses.  (Even if that were true, which it is not, it is not clear how substituting one form of cruelty for another is somehow a solution.) 

Indeed, these reports in the media have proven to be unfounded.  A study released last year showed  a decrease in horse abuse and neglect cases following closure of the last U.S. horse slaughter house in 2007.  Any abandoned or neglected horses are not a result of a lack of horse slaughter houses.

Historically, there have not been increases in abandoned, neglected or abused horses following closures of horse slaughter houses. In 2002 the Illinois slaughter house burned to the ground and was out of commission for some time.  Reports of abandoned, abused and neglected horses in the Illinois area were actually on the rise in the 2 years before the fire but decreased afterwards.

Remember the number of horses slaughtered in the U.S. dropped significantly from over 300,000 annually in the 1990s to 66,000 in 2004.  There was no notable increase during that time of abandoned, abused or neglected horses.

When California banned horse slaughter in 1998, there was no rise in cases of cruelty or neglect to horses. In fact, there was a 39.4% decrease initially and that rose to 88% eventually in horse thefts. (What does that tell you about this "business"?)

Also, from 2005-2007 nearly 15,000 horses were imported from Canada into the U.S. for slaughter. If horse slaughter occurs because of all the unwanted horses, why would these horse slaughter businesses need to import them? The answer is, of course, they wouldn't. Horse slaughter has nothing to do controlling numbers of unwanted horses. It is a business driven by a demand for horse meat primarily as a delicacy in foreign countries.  

As Americans Against Horse Slaughter puts it, "The ‘surplus horse population' [argument] is a scare tactic."  

Horse slaughter is also in no sense humane euthanasia. That much has been established by documents recently released in response to a FOIA request.  The captive bolt gun used in the U.S. slaughterhouses did not typically render horses senseless before slaughter. The slaughter houses never bothered to restrain the horses' heads or use only trained personnel to operate the gun.

 As John Holland has explained, "In its 2000 report on methods of Euthanasia, the AVMA stated that the captive bolt gun should not be used on equines unless head restraint could be assured. This is because of the relatively narrow forehead of equines, their head shyness and the fact that the brain is set back further than in cattle for which the gun is intended. It is difficult for an operator to assure proper placement of the gun.

"No slaughter house ever found a practical way to restrain the heads of the horses, so by the AVMA's very definition, the process was not acceptable. The result was a very large number of ineffective stuns. These misplaced blows undoubtedly caused severe pain until a stunning or fatal blow was delivered. "

Imagine the pain and terror experienced by horses as bolts were repeatedly fired at their heads many times by untrained operators. Many times horses were still conscious when they were then hoisted upside down for slaughter.

Of course, this does not even include the fear and suffering endured by horses as they are transported to slaughter. Most are stuffed into double decked trailers where they cannot raise their heads or even move at all. They are transported long distances without food or water for more than 24 hours.  Many are trampled, injured and even killed during transport.

The USDA has issued a regulation barring use of double decked trailers, but with a wink and a nod at the kill buyers transporting horses to slaughter. 9 CFR 88.3 The USDA has said it does not have the resources to enforce the regulations. As a result, kill buyers still use double decked trailers to haul horses to slaughter.

Also, the regulation only bans use of the double decker trailers for horses en route to slaughter. Kill buyers routinely crowd horses onto these trailers for most of the long, arduous journey. Then for the last leg of the journey to the slaughter house, they put them on proper transports. In this way, they are able to comply technically with the regulation. 

Click here for a detailed report of an investigation by Angels Animals into the transport of horses to slaughter. 

Click here for a look at the state laws governing transport of horses on double decker trailers and the cruelty to horses forced to ride in them.

For more information on the brutality of horse slaughter in the U.S., click here to read the July 25, 2006 testimony of Christopher J. Heyde, Deputy Legislative Director for Animal Welfare Institute, before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. Click here to read testimony offered during a Congressional hearing about the cruelty of horse slaughter.

Also, listen here to a discussion on WFL Endangered Stream Live Talk Radio about horse slaughter by Laura Allen, Executive Director of Animal Law Coalition; John Holland, journalist and consultant for Americans Against Horse Salughter; Dr. Nena Winand, DVM with Veterinarians for Equine Welfare and Paula Bacon, former mayor of Kaufman, Tx and leader of the fight to shut down the horse slaughter facility that operated there until 2007.   (Download this broadcast!)

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO 

You can contact your U.S. representative  and urge him or her to vote YES on the Conyers-Burton Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act of 2009, H.B. 503.

Also, tell your representative to vote YES on H.R. 305, the Horse Transportation Safety Act, which will put an end to all transports of horses on double decked trailers.