Riding to the Rescue of Horses

Angel’s days were numbered. No doubt about it.

Once a beloved pet, the petite white pony was now a starving wisp of skin stretched over bone. Her hooves--untrimmed for months--were grotesque, like gnarled driftwood. Try as she might, Angel could scarcely walk.

When the pony hobbled into a Monterey County auction yard last summer, the slaughterhouse buyers sized her up, made some quick calculations and prepared to bid. But fate intervened, and Angel was soon munching hay at a Carmel sanctuary for victims of equine abuse.

Her story ended happily, but the lives of thousands of other horses that wind up on the auction block do not.

Each year, truckloads of California horses are slaughtered and shipped to Europe and Japan, where the meat is popular as a sweeter, lower-fat alternative to beef.

Some are old and badly injured. But others--like Angel--are merely unlucky castoffs, victims of circumstance or an owner’s callous change of heart.

When backers of a California initiative to ban the sale of horses for slaughter launched their campaign last year, it was unclear how the public would respond. Now we know: Voters are signing the anti-slaughter petitions in droves, virtually assuring the measure a place on the November ballot.

“Horses are companion animals--revered and loved like cats and dogs,” said Cathleen Doyle of the California Equine Council, a nonprofit protection group. “They should not be ending up on someone’s plate.”

The initiative would ban the sale and killing of California horses for human consumption. If the measure becomes law, California would be the first state to bar owners from selling their horses for human consumption.

Doyle and two other women--Long’s Drug Store heiresses Sherry DeBoer and Sidne Long--are the brains and bucks behind the ballot quest, but they have enlisted some influential friends.

A host of celebrities have endorsed their goal--among them Peter Falk, Diane Keaton and Stephanie Powers--as have Olympic riders, several thoroughbred racetracks and the district attorneys of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

For expert help, supporters have turned to a seasoned consultant with a winning record in the hit-or-miss arena of initiative drives. The consultant--Ken Masterton--says backers need 477,000 valid voter signatures to qualify their measure for the ballot, a goal he calls within reach.

“It’s hard to disagree with a campaign to ban horse slaughter,” said Masterton, who estimates that supporters will spend $1 million on the cause.

California rivals Texas as the largest horse-owning state, with an estimated 750,000 animals. It is also a leading supplier of horses for meat.

Although horse meat has never been a staple on American menus, foreign demand sustains a slaughter industry regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Last year, 113,499 horses were killed for export nationwide, USDA statistics show. That figure is down significantly from 1989, when a record 342,877 horses were slaughtered after changes in the federal tax code prompted some breeders to thin their herds.

The declining number killed has cut the ranks of slaughterhouses as well, a change that actually makes things worse for the horses. Because there are so few plants--a total of four, in Texas, Illinois and Nebraska--horses must travel long distances to slaughter, often under harrowing conditions.

Sometimes packed tightly without regard for sex, size or physical condition, they may journey as long as 36 hours without food, water or rest, according to the Humane Society of the United States, which has investigated the slaughter industry. Fighting and problems with loading ensure that some horses arrive injured.

In addition, many horses from California travel in double-decker trucks designed for cattle and other livestock--trucks with ceilings too low for horses, the Humane Society said.

“Especially when they’re going up and down the ramp while loading, they tend to hit the top of their heads and faces,” said Carolyn Stull, an animal welfare specialist at UC Davis who has just completed a university-funded study of commercial horse transport.

While outraged at the transportation methods, Doyle and other initiative backers decry the slaughter process itself, which they describe as cruel and poorly regulated by overworked federal inspectors.

An undercover video recorded by the Humane Farming Assn. shows that horses are chased into a narrow chute and shot in the skull with a metal spike designed to render them unconscious. They are then hung by a hind leg, their throats are slit, their blood is drained and they are dismembered.

Critics say that if the animal is properly stunned by the spike, it can be rendered instantly unconscious.

“But if the guy doing the stunning misses by a fraction of an inch--not difficult when a horse is jumping around in fear--he may not hit that vital area that will cause unconsciousness,” said Marc Paulhus, the humane society’s director of horse protection. So a horse is either shot a second or third time, or hung while still alert, the Humane Society’s investigation found.

Officials at one of the slaughter plants--Belgian-owned Dallas Crown Inc. in Kaufman, Texas--confirmed the slaughter methods but insisted that horses do not suffer.

“When the horse is in the chute, he don’t see nothing, feel nothing or hear nothing,” the company’s vice president, who would only give his first name--Oliver--said in a telephone interview. “I have respect for the horse. It’s a code of honor with us to treat them well.”

Brent Heberlein, general manager of Beltex Corp., a slaughter plant in Fort Worth, Texas, also dismissed claims that horses suffer and said “three or four federal inspectors watch what we do every day.”

He also accused slaughter opponents of spreading misinformation, particularly with undercover videotapes that depict horses writhing after being shot in the head.

“The horse’s body goes through a series of electrical discharges that make its muscles twitch,” Heberlein said. “People see that and mistake it for a horse that’s still conscious. But it’s not what it looks like.”

Stull, the animal welfare specialist, agreed that horses can exhibit “motor reflexes and may even appear to take a stride when in fact they are unconscious.

“It’s difficult for a horse lover to watch a horse being slaughtered,” said Stull, who witnessed about 100 horses being killed at the Beltex plant during her study. “But it’s no different from what happens to cattle. I did not see the horses experiencing a lot of anxiety.”

As for charges that slaughter plants kill healthy, sound horses as well as the old and lame, Heberlein called the chance of that “slim to none.”

“It’s pure economics,” he said. If a horse is rideable, he says, the seller would be foolish to sell it to a slaughterhouse, which pays far less for an average-size horse--about $500--than a seller could get from another type of buyer.

Stull’s study--which covered 300 horses transported into the Beltex plant--showed that the average age of slaughtered animals was 11, about middle age for a horse. Stull said many had an “ambulatory problem, behavioral problem or bad habit that made them dangerous.”

Congress has shown little interest in the subject of horse slaughter, despite pressure from groups like the Humane Society of the United States. The powerful farm lobby--fearful that congressional meddling in the horse-killing business would lead to more regulation of livestock--has thwarted most attempts.

In 1996, a bill backed by the Humane Society sought to regulate the commercial transport of doomed horses, including requirements for rest periods, head room and veterinarians’ certificates, and imposing criminal penalties and civil fines for violations.

But the legislation was gutted by the House Agriculture Committee, and what emerged merely advised the USDA to develop “guidelines” for the regulation of commercial transport.

“It was a press release victory, but the fact is nothing happened for the horses,” said Doyle of the California Equine Council.

Dawn Schu, a USDA spokeswoman, confirmed that no federal rules govern the treatment of horses bound for slaughter. A working group is studying the issue, but Schu could not predict when its work would be complete.

Stull said her study--to be released next month--will include recommendations that would, among other things, limit the duration of trips, ban the hauling of blind horses, set a minimum ceiling height and require that transported horses be able to bear weight on all four legs.

In recent years, the Equine Council considered promoting California legislation to ban horse slaughter, but was told that opposition from interest groups would doom such a measure.

Given the political realities, the horse slaughter issue is an ideal one for the initiative process, backers of the ballot drive say. If successful here, they hope to push the reform movement beyond California to other states.

Those in the business, however, doubt the slaughter will be halted: “There will always be a killer market,” said Oliver of Dallas Crown, “because there are some horses that can’t be saved.”

Supporters of the initiative agree that not all unwanted horses can be saved, but they say slaughter is not the solution. Instead, they want horse owners to have a veterinarian euthanize them--at a cost of about $100--when age, injury or other circumstances dictate it.

While Doyle and her colleagues try to slam the door on slaughter, the Carmel-based Redwings Horse Sanctuary--where Angel is one of 38 happy denizens--tries to change attitudes up front. If the horse can be valued for more than just its ability to carry a rider, the concept of slaughter will become unacceptable, its founders suggest.

Spread over 175 lush acres near the Pacific, the donation-supported sanctuary is an educational center and final resting spot for abused and abandoned horses, most of them rescued from auction and threatened with slaughter.

Angel is the newest resident, joining Rommel, a parade horse lame after years of walking on concrete, and Teddy, who is nearly blind and wears special equine sunglasses--to name just a few.

“The problem is that in our society, the horse’s only value is in performance, and when they can’t perform, they’re thrown away,” said Barbara Clark, organizational director of the sanctuary. “That’s what we’re trying to change.”’