Wild Horses: Current Developments on Capitol Hill

July 20, 2017

8:30 a.m. PST - Good News! The Senate Appropriations Committee just approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2018 Agriculture spending bill to prohibit federal funding for USDA inspections of horse slaughter plants. The amendment was offered by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and co-sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Its purpose is to keep horse slaughter plants from operating in the U.S. (Without USDA inspections, horse slaughter factories cannot sell horsemeat for human consumption.)

Last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted down a similar amendment to the Agriculture spending bill. The differences between the Senate and House bills will now be worked out in conference committee. It is very important that the powerful Senate appropriators have taken a stand for America's wild horses and against this cruel industry.

July 18, 2017

UPDATE: 5:30 pm PST - The House Appropriations Committee just passed an amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill to remove the prohibition on killing healthy wild horses and burros. This devastating vote was taken on the basis of misinformation by the sponsor, Chris Stewart (R-UT), and several of his pro-slaughter colleagues, including Nevada's Mark Amodei, also a Republican. In making his case for helping wild horses by killing them, Rep. Stewart held up the same picture of a thin mare and foal that he has repeatedly shown to mislead the public into thinking that this is representative of the condition of wild horses across the West. In fact, the picture was taken three years ago in Nevada, in one of the few incidents where horses were actually in poor condition. In fact, wild horses are so NOT starving on the range that Stewart apparently cannot muster a picture of a so-called starving wild horse in his own state of Utah. Other inane and inaccurate statements made by Mr. Stewart:

• Birth control doesn't work because it's hard to locate the stallions for inoculation with the vaccine. NOTE TO MR. STEWART: birth control is given to mares, not stallions.
• This amendment won't result in the slaughter of wild horses. IN FACT: THE AMENDMENT WILL ALLOW BLM TO "DESTROY" HORSES IN HOLDING AND SO-CALLED "EXCESS" HORSES ON THE RANGE SO LONG AS THEY ARE NOT SOLD FOR COMMERCIAL PROCESSING OR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.
• He loves these horses and will defend them.... BY PUSHING FOR THEIR MASS SLAUGHTER.

Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Ken Calvert, who previously has been recognized for his support for animal protection, also spoke in favor of killing wild horses to help them. Unfortunately, Mr. Calvert is rewarding the BLM for its decades of mismanagement by throwing up his hands and saying "kill the horses" then trying to hide behind the "euthanasia" label to imply, laughably, that killing tens of thousands of horses is in the best interest of the horses.

Several Democratic members, including Reps. Debra Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), David Price (D-NC), and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) spoke against the amendment.

While this is a disheartening development, THIS FIGHT IS FAR FROM OVER! The Interior Appropriations Bill now goes to the full House for a vote and then on to the Senate.

TODAY: The House Appropriations Committee considers the FY 2018 Interior Appropriations Bill, which includes funding for the Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Burro Program. (You can watch the hearing live here. As of 3:30 pm EST, the committee was still discussing the Homeland Security spending bill, but is expected to take up the Interior bill later this afternoon.)

This is a critical hearing at which the Committee will decide whether to retain language prohibiting the BLM from destroying healthy wild horses and burros and selling them for slaughter. Although the slaughter/killing ban is included in the base bill reported out of subcommittee last week, we expect an amendment to be introduced at the full committee hearing to lift the ban on destroying wild horses to allow for the killing of healthy wild horses and burros. Proponents of such an amendment will label this as “humane euthanasia” in an attempt to fool the public. But make no mistake: In this context, euthanasia equals mass slaughter.

Members who vote in favor of such an amendment would be deceiving their constituents into thinking they voted against horse slaughter, while in fact voting to give BLM license to kill tens of thousands of federally-protected wild horses and burros.

We are hoping for a positive outcome at this hearing, but even if that does not occur, the fight is far from over! This is just step one in the appropriations process and we still have the ability to fight any move for the slaughter/mass killing of America’s mustangs when the full House considers the bill, and more importantly, in the Senate where we have a much more favorable playing field.

ALSO TODAY: The Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee voted to approve the FY 2018 Agriculture Appropriations bill sending it on to the full Appropriations Committee for consideration next week. At this stage, this bill does not contain the anti-horse slaughter language to prohibit federal funding of USDA inspections of horse slaughter plants. (Without such inspections the plants cannot produce horsemeat for human consumption.) However, an amendment to include this "defund" language is expected to be offered at the full committee next week and the chances that it will be adopted are favorable at this time.