Horse Slaughter Hearing Heads To House Subcommittee; SAFE Act
Wild horse waiting for kill-buyer auction
Wild horse purchased from kill auction
Old mare standing in a kill lot
Save Our Forgotten American Equines (SAFE)
The terror is palpable, the treatment of horses was obscene. For all horses, wild and domestic, the SAFE Act must pass to stop feeding the gruesome horse slaughter pipeline with our beloved equines.”
WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, May 25, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Horse Slaughter Hearing Heads To House Subcommittee— Laura Leigh, founder of Wild Horse Education
The Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce (of the Committee on Energy and Commerce) will hold a legislative hearing on Thursday, May 26, 2022, at 12:00 p.m.
The SAFE Act will be heard in the committee. H.R. 3355, the “Save America’s Forgotten Equines Act of 2021,” introduced by Reps. Schakowsky (D-IL) and Buchanan (R-FL), prohibits the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation by a person of any horse or other equine that the person has reason to believe will be slaughtered for human consumption.
Federal law currently does not prohibit the transport of horses across the border for slaughter in Canada and Mexico. Between 2015, and 2019, over 350,000 horses were exported for slaughter from the United States to Mexico. Over 92,000 horses were imported to Canada for slaughter between 2015 and 2018.
“Slaughter of our wild horses is just not an option! Americans are firmly opposed to the slaughter of horses.” said Manda Kalimian, founder of CANA Foundation. "On U.S. soil horse slaughter inspection has been defunded since 2008 through the Appropriations process; essentially stopping slaughter in this country. Congress must engage that language in the yearly funding bill. It is long overdue to stop waisting time and money. The SAFE Act must make it out of this committee and to a floor vote. It is the only responsible action for the taxpayer and for America’s horses.”
Since horse slaughter on U.S. soil ended in 2007, equine welfare organizations nationwide have been working collectively to ban the transport for sale to slaughter. The first version of the SAFE Act was introduced in 2011 and has never been released out of the House committee for a floor vote. Organizations nationwide are raising collective voices through coalition after coalition to get this important bill to a vote.
“The passage of this legislation is critical for both domestic and wild horses,” said Clare Staples, founder of Skydog Sanctuary whose organization has rescued hundreds of wild horses and burros, many of them from slaughter auctions and brokers. “The slaughter bound horses we have rescued exhibit injury and trauma response from the brutal journey they experienced before they found safety in sanctuary. I have personally witnessed the brutality of the predatory horse slaughter industry. Every single year this important legislation gets caught in committee. SAFE needs to make it out of committee and to a vote, now.”
“Increasing numbers of wild horses are landing in danger of the slaughter pipeline since the ‘2020 plan’ began, in an unprecedented acceleration of removals to achieve population levels not seen since the passage of the 1971 Act. Oversight is abysmal and no real effort has been made to stop the flow into the slaughter pipeline of wild horses through the sale and adoption programs,” stated Laura Leigh, President of Wild Horse Education, “I have seen horses at auction and at packing plants. The terror is palpable, the treatment of horses was obscene. For all horses, wild and domestic, the SAFE Act must pass to stop feeding the gruesome horse slaughter pipeline with our beloved equines.”
This hearing will take place in the John D. Dingell Room, 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, as well as remotely using Cisco Webex online video conferencing. The hearing is entitled, “Legislative Hearing to Protect Consumers and Strengthen the Economy.” The hearing will be broadcast live on the subcommittee website.
CANA contact:
Manda Kalimian, founder
mandak@canafoundation.org.
Skydog Wild Horse and Burro Sanctuary:
Clare Staples, founder
clare@skydogranch.com
Wild Horse Education contact:
Laura Leigh, president
laura@WildHorseEducation.org
Laura Leigh
Wild Horse Education
Laura@WildHorseEducation.org
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