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Horse Slaughter Making Headlines Again

By KFBB News Team

Story Created: Oct 14, 2009 at 3:18 PM MST

Story Updated: Oct 14, 2009 at 4:17 PM MST

The controversial law encouraging a horse slaughter plant in the state of Montana is making headlines once again, as its sponsor is speaking out about his plans.

Despite a lengthy list of obstacles standing in the way of making the horse slaughter law into a reality, sponsor and state representative Ed Butcher continues to move forward with his agenda by courting foreign markets interested in horse meat.

Representative Butcher (R), of Winifred, says, “China is particularly appealing because they consume more horse meat than all the rest of them combined, they eat about 163,000 tons of horse meat each year in China.”

Butcher claims such plants are needed to deal with the problem of abandoned horses, but federal law is not making it easy. Recently, the U.S. House and Senate approved a bill containing a provision that prohibits any funds from being used by the USDA to inspect horse meat for human consumption. Still, Butcher is not disheartened.

Butcher explains, “The only thing the USDA has, is they de-funded any federal meat inspection for horses, but that’s not a problem because none of this horse meat would be consumed in the United States anyway. The foreign investors could negotiate however they wanted. If they want the meat there’s nothing that could restrict them from going ahead and doing their own processing.”

The law has seen much opposition from those who claim horse slaughter is inhumane, but Butcher says these people have it all wrong, and that it’s much more inhumane to allow abandoned or sick horses to suffer.

Butcher says, “These animal rights people should be encouraging a horse processing plant to take care of these unwanted, unusable animals, but these people aren’t smart enough to understand that.”

Although the future of horse slaughter may be unclear, it is certain that the controversy surrounding it won’t end anytime soon.

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