Two weeks ago, the House Appropriations Committee voted to reinsert language into the Agriculture appropriations bill to prevent funds for inspections – inspections that are required by law – of horsemeat, continuing a logic-defying policy that harms the welfare of horses, infringes on the rights of horse owners, and cripples the horse industry. Most of all, it prevents the immediate creation of hundreds of good, American jobs. The unemployment rate just hit 9.1 percent and both parties are blaming the other for it. In this instance both are to blame for killing the highly regulated horsemeat industry.
Before 2005, the horsemeat industry was a $65 million a year business. In 2003, the two Texas plants employed a total of 130 people to process 40,000 horses per year. One small business that shipped the meat noted in a 2002 letter that it employed twenty-one people, all of whom were heads of households. Their annual horsemeat airfreight exports generated $4 million for the airlines they used. These jobs are all gone.
Instead, they are in Mexico and Canada. Now horses are shipped much greater distances and at higher costs to slaughter, and are slaughtered without USDA regulation. Last year, over 150,000 horses were sent across the boarders to be processed. Horse processing serves to set a floor price for horses. The higher cost of shipping them to Canada and Mexico has lowered the price owners receive for any horse, and the effects ripple through the entire horse industry. Many U.S. zoos use horsemeat to feed their animals because it’s high in protein and low in fat. Ironically, those zoos now have to buy horsemeat – derived from American horses – from Mexico or Canada. Read More…
