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Most witnesses favor allowing horse slaughter
Members of the Nebraska Legislature's Agriculture Committee listened Tuesday evening to passionate testimony from more than a dozen supporters of a bill that would create a state meat inspection agency to facilitate horse slaughter and the processing of specialty meats.
Sen. Tyson Larson of O'Neill sponsored the legislation and said the measure, LB 305, was a crucial way to help Nebraska agriculture and that state money necessary for funding the new agency is a "worthy investment."
Advocates of the bill said it was necessary to pass the state legislation now because large numbers of horses were being abandoned by horse owners who could no longer afford to care for their horses.
Those favoring the bill said it would create economic development opportunities for rural Nebraska because small slaughterhouses would enter the market to process horses now being shipped to Canada or Mexico for slaughter. Funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's horse slaughterhouse inspections ended in 2006.
Others, like Darrel Eberspacher of Seward, who is president of the Belgian Draft Horse Registry Corp., said slaughterhouse processing was part of horse stewardship and was superior to costly euthanasia and proper carcass disposal.
"Only in politically correct America can thousands of dollars be spent on an animal that should have been slaughtered," he said.
Eberspacher said the bill is a profitable way to create a needed product.
Groups supporting the legislation included members of the Nebraska Farm Bureau and the United Horsemen.
Valerie Hinderlider, owner of the Broken Heart Ranch, a horse rescue organization, said she was angry that the bill's language seemed to be crafted explicitly not to mention horse slaughter. Hinderlider said the state's large number of horses was due to irresponsible over breeding.
"Do you want to eat an old horse?" she asked members of the Agriculture Committee during her testimony. Hinderlider said if the bill becomes law, horse slaughterhouse owners will choose to slaughter usable, younger horses because they are a better source of meat.
Derry Mayfield of Seward said he has run a horse buying operation since 2007 that specializes in buying large numbers of horses to be slaughtered in Canada and Mexico.
"I will not send a good horse to slaughter," he said, because usable horses are sold for more than the typical 15 cents per pound for horses sold for meat.
Without domestic slaughterhouses, American horses face inhumane slaughter in other countries and uncertain futures when their owners abandon them, he said.
About 40 people attended the Agriculture Committee hearing. A dozen supporters testified for the bill, while three people testified against it.