Congress passes legislation allowing the slaughter of wild horses
Last November 20, Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) slipped an eleventh hour amendment into the 2005 Consolidated Appropriations Bill to allow the sale of wild horses for processing into commercial products, opening the door for long protected wild horses to be slaughtered for human consumption overseas.

The measure, secretly tucked in the massive, 3,300-page omnibus bill to avoid public hearings, undermined the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act by allowing wild horses to be sold at auction without limitation. Killer buyers frequent these auctions to purchase horses for slaughter at one of the three remaining horse slaughter plants in the U.S. The meat will be sent to certain European and Asian countries where it is considered a delicacy and eaten in high-profile restaurants.

Without debate, hearings or opportunity for public review the amendment was passed by an unaware Congress and signed into law by President Bush last December 6, ending more than 33 years of federal policy protecting wild horses.

Under this new law, wild horses older than 10 or that have failed to be adopted after 3 times must be sold at livestock auctions without limitations on the number of horses purchased or the intentions of the buyer.

Last April 18 took place the first reported case of wild horses being slaughtered after the passage last December of the Burns' Amendment when six mustangs sold by the BLM to an Oklahoma man three days before were killed in Illinois at Cavel International horse slaughterhouse. more >>

See the actual amendment, Sec. 142 of HR 4868.

Background information on the Burns' Amendment
Wild Horse Preservation
SAPL

The Mustang Issue and the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act
In 1971, Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act (WFHBA) to ensure that wild horses and burros would be protected. The law was the result of public outrage at the discovery that hundreds of thousands of wild horses and burros were the victims of cruel extermination by free-range cattlemen who wanted the equines removed from public lands to make way for livestock.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was charged with managing the population of wild horses roaming public lands, rounding up "excess" wild horses and placing them into an adoption program and long-term holding facilities where older wild horses can spend the rest of their lives.

However, wealthy Western cattlemen who use public lands to feed their livestock and who want to allocate more cattle on federal lands, seeing wild horses as nuisance animals that block their path to new subsidized grazing permits, exerted continued pressure over the BLM to force the removal of more and more equines by mean of costly round-ups, saturating the adoption program, saying that there is an "overpopulation" of wild horses and blaming them for overgrazing the lands in spite of scientific evidence denying such arguments.

In spite of the claims from Sen. Burns and the free-range cattlemen, there is not an overpopulation of wild horses. In fact since 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Horses and Burros Act recognizing that they were quickly disappearing and needed protection from slaughter, the number of wild horses on public lands dropped from about 64,000 to less than 35,000. In 1971, there were 303 herd areas where wild horses and burros were protected, now there are only 186.

Domestic cattle outnumbers wild horses in a 1-150 ratio. While there are less than 35,000 wild horses remaining in 10 states, up to 4,5 million cattle occupy the same lands. Furthermore, a study made by the General Accounting Office showed that the overgrazing problem was actually caused by poorly managed domestic cattle herds, while the wild horses caused no damage to the lands. The study pointed out that a reduction on the number of cattle, not horses, was necessary to protect the health of the lands.

Chemical sterilization and in-the-wild management programs not based on removal are humane and effective ways to control the wild horse population that would save millions of dollars, yet the BLM continues removing more and more wild horses from public ranges to allocate more private-owned cattle at the expense of taxpayers. Now, under the new Burns' law, these horses removed from the range are in danger of being slaughtered to be served as gourmet dinners in upscale restaurants abroad, the same horses the WHFBA protected for more than 30 years.

What you can do
Although the passage of the Burns' Amendment is a serious set back in the fight against horse slaughter, we still have time to stop Sen. Burns and to address the slaughter of horses, domestic and wild alike. Two legislations have been recently introduced in Congress to achieve this goal:

H.R. 503, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, is a bill that would outlaw the practice of horse slaughter as well as the exportation of horses for the purpose of slaughter in foreign countries, ending once and for all the slaughter of American horses. more >>

H.R. 297. This legislation would repeal the Burns' Amendment, restoring the federal protection for wild horses Burns removed from the WFHBA. more >>

S. 576. This legislation is the Senate companion bill of H.R. 297. Like it, S. 576 would restore the federal protection for wild horses removed from the WFHBA by the Burns' Amendment. more >>

Facts and background information on wild horses
Wild Horse Preservation - FAQ
Save Wild Horses

Press articles about the Burns' Amendment
Illinois Leader
Washington Times - National
Washington Times - Op-ed
NY Times

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