Horseplay on the Hill

Benjamin Grove

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005 | 8:20 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Members of a House-Senate panel are quietly planning to kill legislation designed to stop horse slaughter, sources close to the process told the Sun this week.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., would ban federal funding for inspectors at the nation's three slaughterhouses that process horses for human consumption, which would effectively shut down the plants. The plants sell the meat overseas.

The House approved the legislation 269-158, and the Senate approved it 69-28. The provision is part of an agriculture spending bill.

That broader bill is now being finalized by a conference committee of House and Senate negotiators. Sources have said that several panel members want to remove the horse provision using parliamentary rules that could allow them to do it outside a public meeting.

Two of the slaughterhouses are in Texas, the home state of the committee's chairman, Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla.

At Tuesday's meeting, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., a member of the committee and a strong supporter of Ensign's legislation, demanded that the provision be removed in public if it is to be removed at all. But Bonilla rejected that request.

Bonilla was not available after the meeting, nor was his spokeswoman.

Another opponent of Ensign's legislation, Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said he supports taking the provision out. When asked if he would take the action himself, Burns said, "We haven't made the decision yet."

Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said he had supported Ensign's legislation, but was now inclined to oppose it. He said he has recently learned that slaughterhouses may get around a law that bans federal inspectors through a "fee for service" process. And he said horses will be sent to Mexican and Canadian plants to meet even less humane fates.

"The slaughter will go on, but it will not produce American jobs or American income," Bennett said.

He added that farmers are calling his office to ask what they would do with their old horses, and that zoos were concerned because they feed U.S. horse meat to their big cats.

Landrieu was livid that the panel's Republican leaders gave themselves the option of acting outside the view of the public.

"They reserved the right to overturn the will of the majority of the Congress, and they might do it -- in the dark of night," Landrieu told the Sun.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said he fully expected that Ensign's provision will be removed later.

"These guys have become masters at having pretend conferences," Obey said. "In the end, they go in and do whatever they damn well please."

Ensign, who does not sit on the panel, was unavailable for comment Tuesday night. Spokesman Jack Finn said he was not surprised that there may be a movement to strip the language from the bill because some of its opponents sit on the conference panel.

Ensign still has time to lobby panel members although it is not clear when the bill will be finalized.

Activists have been lobbying committee members for several weeks, arguing that the bill will effectively help save U.S. horses from slaughter.

"It's what the country wants and the horses deserve," said Trina Bellak, American Horse Defense Fund president.

Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@lasvegassun.com.