The Law of Unintended Consequences....

Ya'll remember a year or two ago when the animal rights insaniacs convinced a couple of judges in black dresses that killing horses was inhumane? That unlike chickens, cows, piggies, duckies, little lambs, stray dogs and cats, - horsies had some inherent right to live until they dropped dead in some starving farmers field? Well, by golly, they got their wish... now it is illegal to slaughter horses in U.S., federally supervised facilities.

So what's to be done with all those "Black Beauties" and "Flikka's" of modern day .... well, you don't reckon that farmers and ranchers were gonna be able to put them in an old folks home or buy them a rocker for the front porch.....

Horse slaughters taking place on the border

(San Antonio Express-news, Sept 30)

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The American mare swung her head frantically when the door shut to the kill box, trapping her inside. A worker jabbed her in the back with a small knife — seven, eight, nine times.
Eyes wild, she lowered her head and raised it as the blade punctured her body around the withers, again and again.

At the 10th jab, she fell to the floor of this Mexican slaughterhouse, bloodied and paralyzed, but not yet dead. She would lay there a good two minutes before being hoisted from a chained rear leg so her throat could be slit and she could bleed to death.
The primitive procedure at the Ciudad Juárez plant now is the fate of thousands of exported U.S. horses since court rulings closed horse slaughter operations in the United States.
The roan mare was one of nearly 30,000 American horses shipped to Mexican processing plants so far this year, a 369 percent increase from the number recorded this time last year.
By the time she and her unlucky peers were led into this city-owned plant, they typically had traveled in packed trucks 700 miles or more, say the American traders who ship them there.
The lucky ones arrive dead. Many of the others come in "fractured, battered and bruised," said José Cuellar, the plant's veterinarian.

No one disputes that slaughter-bound horses have it far worse today than before U.S. courts, upholding state bans, ended horse slaughter at two plants in Texas earlier this year and at the nation's single remaining one in Illinois on Sept. 21.
Animal welfare advocates who lobbied to end horse slaughter in the United States gambled that Congress would pass legislation by next year barring horses from being exported for slaughter and prohibiting their slaughter in states that don't already ban it.

The rest of the story that the Public Editor of the Express-News, in an accompanying feature column, points out - is that there will now be an outcry to ban exporting the animals. Like that's gonna solve the problem of thousands of excess horses each year.

The wisest head in the bunch, a bona fide animal lover, trained horsewoman and president of the World Cat Congress (whatever in the world that is) said: "This is the fallout, this is the other side of the legislation... horses won't be humanely slaughtered, or they'll be starved to death." She added that prior to this foolishness, horses were killed humanely and the meat shipped to where it was legal and desirable to eat, including zoos.

Anybody want to bet against the animal rights insaniacs will go for the export ban instead of removing the ban on humane, supervised, American meat packing plant operations? Send me your money and save time.........