When a Horse Isn’t Just a Horse . . . but a Meal

Trigger. Black Beauty. Mr. Ed. How would those names sound on a menu?

There’s not much appetite for horse meat in California, but that hasn’t helped more than 10,000 horses--young and old, healthy and infirm--that are being exported from the state every year to be slaughtered for export to countries where a nice filet of horse meat can fetch $15 a pound.

There is a campaign beginning to change that by putting horses in the same category as, say, your cat. The California Equine Council wants to give the state’s voters the chance to designate horses as “companion animals” under state law. In July, the grass-roots organization announced it would begin collecting signatures on petitions to put a “Save the Horses” initiative on the November 1998 ballot.

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“We know horses can’t live forever, and we don’t even care what happens to the carcass once the horse is dead,” says Cathleen Doyle, founder of the council. “All we’re saying is, let’s start treating horses the way we treat our cats and our dogs--as pets, not livestock. Let’s give them a saner, more humane end.”

Their slogan is “Just Say Neigh.” And supporters already include ex-Beatle wife and animal-loving vegetarian Linda McCartney, many equine veterinarians, most of California’s horse rescue groups and several riders from the United States Equestrian Team, including world show jumping veteran Susie Hutchison and Jill Henneberg, who won a silver medal at the Atlanta Olympics riding a $600 horse she rescued from slaughter.

About 100,000 American horses are slaughtered for food every year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If the initiative is successful, California would be the first state to impose criminal penalties (up to three years in jail) for sending a horse to slaughter for food. About 20% of the nation’s horses are in California.

Although outlawing the sale of live horses for slaughter would not in itself stop the killing, making the sale a felony would probably undercut profits from sales of California horses to people planning to slaughter them.

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When horses are sold for slaughter, they are crowded into low-ceiling trailers designed for cattle and trucked without food and water to a slaughterhouse. Most California horses are sent to Texas for slaughter--a three-day ride. (There are no slaughterhouses for horses in California.) The horses are killed by metal bolts shot point blank into their heads, splitting their skulls.

Much of the horse meat from California is served in restaurants in France, Belgium and Japan.

Although it can cost as little as $50 to have a vet administer a lethal injection and $100 to have the carcass removed, euthanasia cannot be performed on horses whose meat is destined for human consumption. Horses that are euthanized end up in rendering plants where their carcasses are “recycled” into such products as paint thinner, soaps and protein meal for other animals.

Some opponents of the proposed initiative reject the definition of a horse as a companion or pet. “Our horses are racing animals; they don’t live in barns in little girls’ backyards,” said a racing trainer who has watched dozens of horses that “didn’t make the cut” as great runners be auctioned off for slaughter. “This is commerce; it’s not a hobby like show jumping,” said the trainer, who asked not to be identified.

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Others have argued that, in addition to the cost of medically putting down a horse, the horse meat industry performs a necessary service by helping rid the marketplace of horses that are crippled, old or unwanted.

Several years ago, the Studio City-based Equine Council sponsored and lobbied for a state law to end charreada rodeo in the state, in which horses were tripped for entertainment. The high profile bill went into effect in 1995.

The council will need about $200,000 and 600,000 signatures to get the companion animal initiative on the ballot, says the Equine Council’s Doyle, who is raising a filly that was in a holding pen ready to be slaughtered with its mother when Doyle rescued it.

“There aren’t enough of us to rescue all the horses in line for slaughter. We need a law to recognize the horse as an important part of our California heritage that deserves our protection.”

Mr. Ed couldn’t have said it better.