Friday, May 20, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SLAUGHTER OF 41: House votes to halt horse sales

Montana senator: Amendment dead on arrival, marketplace works

WASHINGTON -- House lawmakers voted Thursday to end federal wild horse sales and brushed aside promises of new protections the government put in place this week to prevent animals from being resold for slaughter.

The House voted 249-159 for an amendment to shut down a Bureau of Land Management sales program that critics said was ruined last month by the destruction of 41 horses.

While decrying the slaughters, supporters of the sales said they have placed nearly 2,000 wild horses into private hands since March.

A 22-minute debate pitted gruesome images of horses butchered to make a buck against horses left to starve on public lands or penned up in government corrals.

"The very notion that the wild American horse will be slaughtered as a food source for foreign gourmets has struck a chord with the American people," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., who proposed the sales be ended.

The vote was seen as a victory for animal welfare activists. But it might not last long.

When the amendment reaches the Senate, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., plans "to throw it out."

"I'm in the livestock business, and I've bought and sold horses all my life," Burns said Thursday. "Basically, the marketplace works."

Burns authored a 2004 law directing the BLM to create a sales program for "excess" wild horses, those that are more than 10 years old or have been passed over for adoption at least three times.

Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter, both R-Nev., voted to preserve the wild horse sales. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., voted against the program.

"These are not the horses you envision as Black Beauty," Gibbons said. "If they were, they wouldn't have a hard time being adopted. These are horses weakened, deformed genetically."

The amendment was added to a 2006 Interior Department spending bill the House passed.

The bill also directs the Bush administration to report how it has spent windfall profits from federal land sales in Southern Nevada, a possible precursor to an attempt to redirect some of revenues into the federal treasury.

The BLM estimated 8,400 horses must be sold this year to shed the government of excess horses in holding facilities.

The agency suspended sales April 27 upon learning 41 horses had been resold and slaughtered at an Illinois meat packing plant.

BLM Director Kathleen Clarke resumed the sales Thursday after announcing guidelines that threatened criminal penalties against buyers who sell or trade horses to slaughter.

Agency officials are working with the nation's three horse slaughter plants to turn away BLM wild horses and burros sold under the program.