"Horse killings are creating a surprising split; Rights activists, tribal groups face off in court" by Fernanda Santos | New York Times, August 11, 2013
NEW YORK — It seemed at first like a logical alliance for boldface names in the interconnected worlds of Hollywood and politics. Bill Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico, and the actor Robert Redford, a staunch conservationist, joined animal rights groups in a federal lawsuit to block the revival of horse slaughter in the United States, proclaiming that they were “standing with Native American leaders,” to whom horse slaughter “constitutes a violation of tribal cultural values.”
The two men started a foundation to protect New Mexico’s wildlife, but they soon found themselves on a collision course with the Navajo Nation, the country’s largest federally recognized tribe. The tribe’s president released a letter to Congress Aug. 2 asserting his support for horse slaughtering.
Free-roaming horses cost the Navajos $200,000 a year in damage to property and range, said Ben Shelly, the Navajo president. There is a gap between reality and romance when, he said, “outsiders” such as Redford — who counts gunslinger, sheriff’s deputy, and horse whisperer among his film roles — interpret the struggles of American Indians.
“Maybe Robert Redford can come and see what he can do to help us out,” Shelly said in an interview. “I’m ready to go in the direction to keep the horses alive and give them to somebody else, but right now the best alternative is having some sort of slaughter facility to come and do it.”
What I have noticed about AmeriKa is the first solution is always to kill it!
Bear stuck in a tree? Kill it!
Cops see trouble on the street? Kill 'em!
People who don't agree with the agenda? Lie to declare war on them, and then kill 'em!
Why would horses be any different?
The horses, tens of thousands of them, are at the center of a passionate, politicized dispute in court, in Congress, and even within tribes across the West on whether US authorities should sanction their slaughtering to thin herds. The practice has never been banned, but it stopped when money for inspections was cut in the budget.
In Navajo territory, parched by years of unrelenting drought and beset by poverty, one feral horse consumes 5 gallons of water and 18 pounds of forage a day — sometimes the water and food a family had bought for itself and its cattle.
Maybe the U.S. military could help; after all, they have always done right by the native Americans.
According to the latest estimates, there are 75,000 feral and wild horses in the nation, and the numbers are growing, Shelly said. They have no owners, and many of them are thought to be native to the West. The tribes contend that they must find an efficient way of culling the population.
Thank goodness the masters of the planet don't think this way about people, huh?
Although it is common to shoot old and frail horses — and more merciful than a ride to the slaughterhouse — there are too many of them, and there is some money in rounding them up and selling them at auction.
I knew there had to be another motive at work here, and as is common in AmeriKa, money is at the root of it.
There is also the question of sovereignty, one of the points raised in a resolution endorsing horse slaughter that was issued by the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and largest organization of American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments. Citing hillsides and valleys denuded by overgrazing by feral and wild horses, which on reservations across the West “are nearly everywhere you look,” the resolution accuses the federal government of failing to consult the tribes before proposing language in the Agriculture Department’s appropriations bill to again withhold money for slaughterhouse inspections.
Richardson acknowledged the conflict, which has sown divisions even among members of the same tribe....
I'm tired of conflict and division. Maybe we could sit down and break bread over it?
“Institutionally,” Richardson said, responding to the claims by the Navajos’ president, “there have to be some issues that have to be dealt with, and that’s why the ultimate solution is to find a natural habitat, or a series of natural habitats, and adoption for the horses.”
The United States has never had a market for horse meat, a dietary staple in Belgium, China, and Kazakhstan. It does have a history of horse slaughtering, though; at one point there were more than 10 such slaughterhouses in the nation....
In their last year, the three plants slaughtered 30,000 horses for human consumption and shipped 78,000 for slaughter in Canada and Mexico, according to statistics by US and Canadian authorities. Congress’ subsequent unwillingness to finance inspections made slaughtered horse meat ineligible for the seal of inspection needed to be commercially sold, effectively ending the practice.
And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.
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Related: So Hungry I Could Eat a Horse
After seeing rat passing for lamb, are you sure about that Happy Meal?
What you come to realize is that the global food supply chain has been entirely compromised and is unsafe. What did you think, multinational and global agribusinesses would put safety and health ahead of profits?
"Fertility drugs, nature better than horse roundups" by SCOTT SONNER | Associated Press, June 06, 2013
RENO — A scathing independent scientific review of wild horse roundups in the West concludes the US government would be better off investing in widespread fertility control of the mustangs and let nature cull any excess herds instead of spending millions to house them in overflowing holding pens.
Oh, we can't spend a few millions to give the horses a home, but we can waste trillions upon trillions on wars and bank bailouts.
A 14-member panel assembled by the National Science Academy’s National Research Council, at the request of the Bureau of Land Management, concluded BLM’s removal of nearly 100,000 horses from the Western range over the past decade is probably having the opposite effect of its intention to ease ecological damage and reduce overpopulation.
Isn't that government all over?
By stepping in prematurely when food and water supplies remain adequate, and with most natural predators long gone, the land management agency is producing artificial conditions that ultimately serve to perpetuate population growth, the committee said Wednesday in a 451-page report recommending more emphasis on the use of contraceptives and other methods of fertility control.
Related: What must be done
Abortion is vital, 'eh?
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Also see: Panel recommends sterilizing some wild horses out West
