American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011 and other things

Three bloggers here and none of us posting, but a lot of horse stuff going on. One is picking up a lot of business teaching relationship focused horsemanship, another is mostly offline. I'm mostly just overwhelmed.

I was going to post about the Equine Herpes outbreak when it hit, but realize that anyone reading this, with horses, in effected areas is likely even more on top if the news than I am.

Horse advocates in my State of New Hampshire had a bit of a surprise when we found out that a bill, HB 0339, that already had gone through the NH legislation to allow the state vet to inspect locally raised and slaughtered meat, allowing local farmers to better sell and something I support as a localvore activist as well, included equines as well, despite the legal issues of slaughtering horses for food in our country.

In one section it was clear that it was ADDED to the text "This term as applied to food products of equines shall have a meaning comparable to that provided in this paragraph with respect to cattle, sheep, swine, and goats"

NH activists went to work to try to get this vetoed and several met with the bill sponsor Representative Laurie Harding, who had not realized this had even been added. She and the other sponsors are determined to have the horse and other equine references removed from the bill as of next January. Our Governor, one to give a shit about what his constituents want, signed it in on June 6. Frankly, while I think this is a great bill other than including horses, I do think they should have had to reintroduce the ORIGINAL text and the watched it carefully. How the fuck did someone "sneak" this in and it not get noticed? (and I want to know WHO put it in and make sure s/he never gets elected again! to anything) So we'll breath our sighs of relief in January, until then, we're going to feel a bit anxious.

And, yet, there may be hope.....even with Slaughterhouse Sue Wallis and the United Anti-Horsemen continuing to try to make horse slaughter legal here. No, I won't post links to their crap, you can find it, you're probably reading blogs which do post the links and discuss it more.

What I want to note here is that Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have just introduced S. 1176, the "American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011" and it's time to start making sure that our Senators and Representatives know that we want this to pass this time! Now!

This bill will shut down Slaughterhouse Sue, will stop bullshit like we in NH have had to deal with, will stop transport of horses to other countries for exceptionally cruel slaughter:

"The slaughter of horses is not a substitute for humane euthanasia though it is often mischaracterized as such by opponents who are more concerned with wringing a few bucks from a suffering animal than doing what is right," said Chris Heyde, deputy director of government and legal affairs for the Animal Welfare Institute. "AWI commends Senator Landrieu and Senator Graham for their continued leadership and for reintroducing this very important measure."

If you aren't using this already and don't have your legislators on speed dial, you can start at The Compassion Index at AWI (This link had not been working but IS NOW).