U.S. quietly lifts controversial ban on horse slaughter

From yesterday's Toronto Star: www.thestar.com/news/article/1095751

This week U.S. Congress quietly lifted a five-year ban on funding horse meat inspections, opening the possibility that slaughterhouses could be up and running within weeks. In 2006, the U.S. federal government stopped providing funds for inspections at plants that slaughter horses intended for human consumption.

Since then horses that would have been slaughtered in the U.S. have been diverted to plants in Mexico and Canada.

"It was all done secretly," says Silvia Christen, executive director of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association, who says she and her member ranchers were pleased with the news. "It was passed by Congress in a budget meeting."

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a statement Tuesday confirming that it was prepared to inspect facilities set up for horse slaughter to make sure federal laws were being followed. And the first facility may be in South Dakota.

Christen believes there are facilities prepared to go into action almost immediately. But she also says inspections will be "more stringent than they were before the ban. There will be a lot of people watching to make sure slaughter facilities follow appropriate procedures - to make sure they treat the animals humanely."

This summer, reporters from the Star followed a trailer truck filled with horses purchased at auction in Shipshewana, Ind., through to its final destination at Richelieu Meats near Montreal. The shocking revelation of the long drive and poor treatment led one Toronto restaurant to remove horse meat from its menu.

At issue was not simply the morality of eating horse meat but rather the mistreatment of horses shipped in cramped conditions without food or water over days toward certain, and perhaps inhumane, death in Canada.

The U.S. Government Accountability office reported that 138,000 horses were transported to Canada or Mexico in 2010 - virtually the same number killed before slaughter was banned in the U.S.

Equine welfare advocates were hoping the ban would remain in effect and there would be an additional ban on the transportation of horses meant for slaughter across borders. That didn't happen.

Canada was even labelled "opportunistic" - taking advantage of a situation in which horses could be purchased in the U.S. for less than $50 and sold toEurope and Asia at a considerable profit. Some horse meat is also consumed in Quebec.

It is a controversial issue that has even horse lovers divided. While some animal welfare organizations insist horses should not be slaughtered for human consumption, others, including the American Veterinary Medical Association, acknowledge there is a problem with horse overpopulation in the U.S. - and that it would be better to kill the animals humanely rather than
allow them to starve to death.

For example, as horse owners lost their farms to foreclosure during the economic downturn over the past few years, there were reports that horses were being set free in open ranges to survive on their own. Ultimately many horses, unaccustomed to fending for themselves, died slowly and painfully, say equine advocates.

Animal welfare organizations noticed a spike in horse neglect investigations after 2007.

But many animal lovers insist horses are not like cows or sheep in that they are not raised to be eaten and are often medicated with drugs rendering them unfit for human consumption. And the European Union, a large buyer of horse meat, has increased its own inspection standards regarding the safety of the meat in imports.

Many ranchers, however, are celebrating.

One Wyoming lawmaker dismissed the 2006 ban, which took its toll on the state's agriculture industry, for what she called sentimental notions.

The legislation has already sparked an emotional response from animal rights activists.

Sinikka Crosland, executive director of the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, says she was disappointed to hear the news that horse slaughter plants could reopen in the U.S. She was surprised U.S. President Barack Obama would sign such a bill considering he had previously indicated he did not support horse slaughter.

"A few people managed to slip this through in the Department of Agriculture," says Crosland, who remains optimistic a federal bill, currently before Congress called the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011, will supersede this recent bill and end horse slaughter completely.

Caribou going down, Moose to be slaughtered, in Newfoundland

Newfies continue tradition of bad wildlife decisions.

By: Barry Kent MacKay

I love Newfoundland, “The Rock”, as it is known in Canada. It is a huge island, the easternmost landmass in North America, and a place out of time, possessed of a cold, rugged beauty encompassing forests, rocky cliffs and shorelines, deep fiords, ancient mountains and bleak seas. It also has a bloody history of animal destruction. Newfoundland species and endemic subspecies of wildlife driven to extinction include the Labrador Duck, Atlantic Gray Whale, Newfoundland Wolves, Sea Mink, Great Auks, and the migratory Eskimo Curlews. Other species have greatly declined, most infamously including the Northern Cod (although, of course, the Newfoundland fishing industry and federal government, after years of ignoring all scientific warnings about overfishing, blame the seals for the disastrous collapse of commercial fish stocks – a collapse that continues to this day).

By virtue of it being an island, Newfoundland lacks many species that are common on the mainland, just over the horizon. These include such species as frogs and Ruffed Grouse, the Striped Skunk, Wolverine, Least Weasel, porcupine, jumping mice, White-tailed Deer and, well, the Moose!

Weighing in at 300 to 600 kilograms, the Moose is the world’s largest deer, and one of the most widely distributed, with 8 subspecies spread around the northern hemisphere, but not, originally, on the island of Newfoundland. That would never do, and so about a hundred years ago a very small number of Moose were moved from the mainland, and released in Newfoundland; a bigger target for hunters than the native, but smaller, Caribou. The third and final species of deer native to the nearby mainland, the White-tailed Deer, is even smaller than the Caribou, and also is not native to the island of Newfoundland.

In November, 2011, Canadian Boreal Initiative released a bulletin called Intact Habitat Lanscapes and Woodland Caribou on the Island of Newfoundland, by Dr. Jeffrey Wells, Dr. John Jacobs, Dr. Ian Goudie and Jonathan Feldgajer, which referenced research indicating that the Caribou, the one native deer on the vast island of Newfoundland, had decreased by two thirds.

This at a time when we are fighting to try to prevent planned lethal culling of Moose, the larger, and non-native deer species, whose numbers are burgeoning to the point that there have been many horrific collisions with automobiles on the island’s roads.

But here’s the catch, and the proof that we are dealing with a species out of control – not Moose, but us! The reason that Moose are increasing to a point where they are regarded a serious road hazard is the exact same reason that has been identified as the primary factor driving the caribou to endangerment, and that is the practice of cutting large swaths of timber. It’s even allowed in national parks!

In 2002 the caribou population was estimated at around 85,000 animals, but has now dropped to about 32,000 animals. Caribou need joining “corridors” of intact forest to navigate their migratory routes in relative safety from bears. Bears are nowhere near as likely to kill caribou as wolves, but they were wiped around 1913, close to when, in 1904, four moose from Nova Scotia firmly established that species on the island (there were earlier attempts, apparently unsuccessful). The coyote is not as efficient a predator of ungulates, but in the 1980s they established themselves by crossing the ice from the mainland.

Both Moose and Caribou are, of course, hunted for “sport”.

We are advocating a more nuanced forestry practice, including the protection of forests in national parks, and the establishment of protected forest areas that will contribute to fewer moose and more caribou. Moose might well have reached the island on their own, of course, it is just a quirk of ecological fate that they did not. But they should never have been wiped out. Wolves should never have been exterminated. Forestry management should be more nuanced, and regulated to consider the needs of caribou. Coyotes also benefit from deforestation. Saving Newfoundland forests from clearcutting would be a good major step in correcting a long history of bad decisions.