Sign the petition!Purchased by slaughterhouse middlemen at auction, thousands of American horses continue to be shipped long distances in cramped trailers without food, water or rest to be slaughtered for meat in foreign countries. The majority of these horses are young, healthy animals that could go on to lead productive lives with loving owners.
Over 80% of the American people agree that this barbaric practice should stop. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act will ban the slaughter of American horses for human consumption, as well as the export of horses to be slaughtered elsewhere. Please unite behind this important bill to ensure its safe and swift passage. Thousands of equine lives depend on it.
Despite that over 80% of Americans are strongly opposed to horse slaughter, the trade in horse meat continues to operate in the shadows.
Many states – including Texas, California and Illinois – have banned domestic slaughterhouses, yet their laws do not extend past their borders or prevent American horses from being slaughtered for human consumption abroad.
Each year tens of thousands of American horses are sold at livestock auctions where they fall prey to “killer buyers” – middlemen who buy from unsuspecting owners. These buyers collect the horses - 90% of which the US Department of Agriculture's Guidelines for Handling and Transporting Equines to Slaughter deems in “good” condition - in poorly managed feedlots. The horses are then loaded onto a truck and mixed without regard to gender or size before being hauled for more than 24 hours across U.S borders to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada. Deprived of rest, food or water, many often suffer injury and even death on the road.
Arriving at these foreign plants, the horses are led into stalls where they are brutally killed. Ultimately, the plants transport the horse-meat for consumption at high-end eateries in countries like Italy, France, Belgium and Japan.
In an effort to curtail this inhumane industry, the new American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act is up for a vote that would ban export of horses en masse for slaughter in foreign plants in Canada and Mexico and prevent the possibility of slaughterhouses from operating domestically.
Sign the petition telling Congress to pass this extremely important legislation and end this barbaric practice forever.
