Foreign-Owned Slaughterhouses Seek to Sidestep U.S. Horse Slaughter Ban
by Mat Thomas, In Defense of Animals
In September 2005, U.S. lawmakers passed the Ensign/Byrd Amendment as part of the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill to end the slaughter of American horses for human consumption overseas by making the use of federal tax money in horse slaughterhouses illegal for one year. The new law would essentially shut down the horse slaughter industry in America because the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must inspect horses before they can be sold for meat or transported for slaughter across the U.S. border. Horses are a gentle, intelligent species, and Americans strongly support these new regulations to prevent equines from being killed for food. Yet the USDA is now trying to take the law into its own hands by considering a scheme that would allow the horsemeat industry to pay for inspections themselves.
After the horse slaughter ban passed both houses with flying colors, three European-owned slaughterhouses covertly filed an emergency rulemaking petition that, if approved by the USDA, would allow them to continue butchering tens of thousands of horses each year for meat exports. The plants advised the USDA to replace federally funded inspections with a "fee-for-service" inspection system without notifying the American public or following normal rulemaking processes, claiming that it is in the "public's interest" to keep this maneuver secret.
"It is beyond our imagination in the U.S. Congress that the USDA would flout its mandate and spend tax dollars in the coming months working on ways to circumvent this law," said Congressman John Sweeney (R-NY). "Even our most hardened opponents knew that the purpose of the amendment was to stop horse slaughter - there was never any confusion about that. It's disturbing that an agency like the USDA feels it is appropriate to obstruct a law passed by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority in Congress when their sole mission is to implement the law."
A Washington, DC-based public interest law firm representing several national animal welfare organizations recently wrote to Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns demanding that the USDA throw out the industry's deceitful petition. The letter points out that approving a fee-for-service proposal "would not only thwart an unequivocally expressed Congressional directive, it would also violate the Federal Meat Inspection Act's requirement that the USDA, not private facilities, fund horse slaughter inspection." One reason that self-funded inspections are illegal is that such a system would give the horse slaughter industry a financial influence over the inspection process, possibly enabling them to violate animal welfare laws in pursuit of increased profit.
Please help stop the greedy foreign-owned horsemeat industry from undermining the will of the American people and the decree of U.S. lawmakers by insisting that Secretary of Agriculture Johanns deny their self-serving petition. Also urge your Senators and Representative to tell Johanns the same thing. You can get contact information for your elected officials by calling the Government Information Hotline at (916) 322-9900 and giving the operator your address.
Secretary Mike Johanns
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20250
Tel: (202) 720-3631
Email: Mike.Johanns@usda.gov
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