Activists say laws have done little to protect wild horses

Benjamin Grove

Friday, April 29, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Animal activists say they suspect that a number of wild horses from public lands have gone to U.S. slaughterhouses for years, despite laws designed to protect them.

"It happens all the time," said Trina Bellak of the American Horse Defense Fund Inc.

The issue of wild horse slaughter is in the spotlight this week in Congress following reports that 41 wild horses sold by the Bureau of Land Management were re-sold and slaughtered at an Illinois plant.

Activists said the horses were slaughtered as a result of a law enacted in December. They say the new law threatens to dramatically increase the number of wild horses slaughtered every year.

The legislation, championed by Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., directed the BLM to sell off some of the herd -- wild horses that were at least 10 years old or that had not been taken at three agency adoptions. Nearly 2,000 horses have since been sold, with roughly half of those delivered.

The Bureau of Land Management in recent years has faced budget shortfalls in its round-up and adoption programs and has scrambled to keep up with the needs of an estimated 37,000 horses -- about 19,000 of them in Nevada. Government officials say federal public lands in the West cannot support the animals, which activists dispute.

Horse activists said their fears about the new law were realized when the BLM reported that two groups of sold horses -- 41 total -- had been re-sold and slaughtered this month at the Cavel International Inc. plant in DeKalb, Ill.

The BLM promptly halted deliveries and sales of horses pending a review of its rules, and agency officials expressed regret.

"It's very unfortunate and upsetting that this happened," BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said. "But this is the legal reality the way this is set up."

Activists say they suspect that even before the Burns legislation, an unknown number of wild horses have been slaughtered at U.S. plants -- legally and illegally. It is difficult to estimate how many, or how the animals got from Western rangelands to slaughterhouses.

Activists say the animals are hard to track because they are often sold at a number of auctions before middlemen commonly known as "killer buyers" purchase them for sale to plants.

"It's a serious problem," said Andrea Lococo, wildlife consultant for the Animal Welfare Institute. "And unfortunately the BLM has done a very poor job of screening potential adopters."

Nearly 66,000 horses were killed last year in the three U.S. plants licensed to slaughter horses. Cavel and two Texas plants are foreign-owned by French and Belgian companies and sell much of the meat overseas. The Dallas Crown plant in Texas sells some product to zoos.

Most of the horses are brought in by private owners and breeders, and some by killer buyers, plant managers said.

Cavel general manager James Tucker said only about 100 to 200 of roughly 25,000 horses bought and slaughtered at his plant each year were once BLM wild horses. The horses went through the BLM's adoption program in which adopters took title to the animals from the BLM after a year. Those legitimate owners later -- quite legally -- sold them to the plant, Tucker said.

BLM horses are identifiable by a neck freeze brand and the plant is required to notify the BLM if sellers don't have the title paperwork, Tucker said. All the plant's meat is shipped abroad for human consumption, sold at slightly below the cost of beef in Europe, he said.

Animal advocates said they suspect slaughterhouses ignore paperwork and freeze brands and illegally kill an unknown number of horses relatively fresh from BLM rangelands -- animals either stolen or adopted and promptly sold against agency rules.

"We've always known that wild horses were being slaughtered, even with the law," said Christopher Heyde, policy analyst with the Washington-based Society for Animal Protective Legislation. "The only way to stop it is ban it outright."

Stories of horses such as Liberty Alive, a healthy young chestnut-colored horse rescued from the Dallas Crown plant, are not uncommon, Bellak said. Her group negotiated to buy the horse in 2002 after receiving a tip that a horse with a BLM brand was due for slaughter at the plant. The horse, 10th in the slaughter line when the deal was secured, was eventually adopted by a family in New Jersey, Bellak said.

How Liberty got to the plant could not be traced, Bellak said. The plant did not have the title to the horse and should not have been lining it up for slaughter, Bellak said.

"She lived happily ever after," Bellak said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't always end up that way."

A plant spokesman doubts the Liberty story. Dallas Crown consultant and adviser Jim Bradshaw said plant officials do not recall the horse or the last-minute purchase.

"That's just not our practice," Bradshaw said. "They (activists) really go out of their way to make us look like evil people. We're not. We're operating within the law."

Plant officials said they have little interest in BLM wild horses because they tend to be smaller, produce tougher meat, and are hard to control at the plant.

Plant officials said bills such as one Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., plans to introduce would put them out of business. Ensign's bill would ban the interstate transport of all horses for slaughter for human consumption. The plants, which employ between 40 and 100 people, provide a service, plant officials said.

"This is an important part of agriculture, like it or not," Bradshaw said. "It's a fact of life. It's doing something about a really serious issue, and that is: What do you do with a horse nobody wants anymore?"

Tucker said that the Cavel plant's slaughter of wild horses this month was legal under the new law.

"The problem is that it's a PR problem for the BLM," he said. "They don't want to be seen as an agency that is sending horses to slaughter."