Helping the Horses?

As I have mentioned numerous times, the economy right now is not at all favoring horse owners. Normally, horses are expensive but when you add increasing prices on hay, grain, tack, and everything else you could need it becomes more apparent. It is hard for people to have one horse and for those that have more than one it seems like they should be taking loans out. Recently, horse slaughter was made illegal in the United States which directly relates to the number of horses who are now not being cared for in an efficient manner.

This new law is surprisingly a very controversial subject in the horse world. There are two sides of the argument and I honestly am not sure where I stand on this matter. First, there are some people who look at horse slaughter and are completely opposed to it. These people think about the condition of the horses when they are sent to slaughter. They are normally in very poor condition because the owners have finally realized that this is the only thing left to do because they have not taken good care of them. The other point to think about is the transportation to the slaughter houses. These weak, sick horses are normally shoved in a semi-truck and transported in huge groups.

The other side of the argument is that now that slaughter has been banned in the US, many horses who would have gone to slaughter before are not being taken care of well because the owners don't have the money. In order to get rid of horses that could not be taken care of financially, owners could send them to slaughter for a very cheap price. Now these horse are being forced to suffer in barns that are not appropriate and conditions that are not healthy.

This is a very hot topic in the equine world because it is a new law and many people are not sure where they stand on this subject. Personally, I do not believe that slaughter is the only way of getting rid of a horse that can not be properly cared for. I know there are rescues and even individual families all around that would happily take a horse instead of seeing them be sent to slaughter. I will most likely never support slaughter of horses. Instead, I think we need to educate our horse owners of alternate options to get these horses out of these terrible living conditions.