October 18, 2007

A sticky issue has arisen since the Humane Society of the United States succeeded in getting horse slaughtering banned earlier this year – and that's what to do with the abandoned or unwanted horses.

The previous method was to slaughter the horse or surrender it to one the few horse rescued.

But with slaughtering outlawed, horse rescues are becoming overwhelmed.

The result: many horse owners say they don't know what to do with the horses they can no longer care for.

Today, hay prices are high and the economy is somewhat low – making horses harder to care for.

And with slaughter houses closed, the sometimes sick and elderly animals have to go somewhere. It's illegal to simply leave them where they lay – and the alternative is to sell the animals to one of a few outfits that will transport them to Mexico for slaughter.

That's the same kind of slaughter that was just banned here – and the HSUS reports it's working diligently to ban the transport of horses for slaughter outside U.S. borders, too.

Many of these animals don't need to die and can be adopted to willing families – but with the rescues that would care for them filling up fast, there's no saying what will happen to the 80 to 100K horses that won't be slaughtered this year.

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