Unwanted Horses: New Questions, Old Issue

The question of what to do with an unwanted horse is not new—it’s just increasingly complicated.

Previously, unwanted horses were mostly “let out to pasture,” euthanized and buried, dumped in a landfill, rendered, or sold to slaughter or a secondary use market. Today, many of those options are absent or unrealistic.

The horse slaughter ban ensures some unwanted horses are sold at auction and are then placed on trucks and exported for slaughter. The volume is arguable. A typical sale nets less than a couple hundred bucks and often is only two small digits. I know of one instance where an owner trucked his horses to a border destination in hopes the auction there might bring enough to make it worthwhile. “I made less on four horses than what my fuel cost to get home was,” he said.

Landfills are increasingly reluctant to take dead animals for fear of increasing environmental controls. Environmental regulation for private landowners is tightening on how they can dispose of any animal on their property and concerns for postmortem liability of persistent euthanasia drugs is increasing. Rendering remains costly and scheduling can be inconvenient.

Increasingly too, unwanted horses are being dumped on public, private, and sovereign tribal lands, too. The Confederated Tribes of the Yakima Indian Reservation estimate there are more than 12,000 feral horses on their lands; many showing up with halters and shoes on. They also estimate the population with reproduction is growing by up to 20% per year.

While many of these things aren’t new, banning slaughter is. So sincerely please, what’s wrong with properly slaughtering an unwanted horse for the meat market when estimates are some 16 million people currently consume horse meat worldwide? Is it truly more humane to dump them or load them on trucks to go to Canada and Mexico with a trip that can legally take up to 28 hours? Most people in the U.S. will never see a horse slaughtered nor will they even be around the sale of horse meat, much less eat it. So how then does a value held by some in the U.S. become universal and an ethic to foist upon other people, preferences, cultures, and religions? Does it make one less of a person if another individual chooses to eat something you wouldn’t?