Bill Prevents Horse Slaughter In US Until September 2015

by Mike Kane 
The $1.1 trillion spending bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Saturday will prevent any horse slaughter plants from re-opening in this country for at least another year. 

The omnibus appropriations bill does not provide any funding for the Department of Agriculture to pay personnel to inspect plants. Equine slaughterhouses are not permitted by law to operate without inspectors. The bill covers the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, 2015, but international equestrian and philanthropist, Victoria McCullough, the president of Chesapeake Petroleum, said that by being part of a continuing resolution, it will stay in effect at least through the next presidential election. McCullough, who has lobbied Congress to end horse slaughter for several years, received the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s Earle Mack-TRF Champion Award this year for her efforts. 

“We’re safe until 2016, until the tenure of this administration,” she said. “I won’t really be too worried about that because by then I will have the legislation that will end us from sending horses to slaughter anyway.” 

McCullough said that the move to defund the Department of Agriculture for slaughterhouse inspection took place in 2013 because there were a total of three pending permits for facilities in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming.

While working on a bill that would have bi-partisan support to keep any equine slaughterhouses from operating in the U.S. and prevent the exportation of horses for slaughter, the defunding approach was adopted as a short-term solution to the problem. She said that Vice President Joseph Biden decided to use the Department of Agriculture’s budget as a way to prevent the plants from re-opening and then asked for the support of the Senate’s leaders. 

“It was the vice president’s idea and was inserted by him,” McCullough said. “He was the only one who could get Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to approve. This is solely the vice president, who is the greatest animal lover. He’s the most amazing person.” 

McCullough said Monday that she has been involved in saving more 9,000 horses from being sold for slaughter and is determined to have federal legislation adopted that will effectively stop the exporting of horses to be slaughtered. 

“Piece by piece we’re getting what we need,” McCullough said. “The budget was a fail-safe. It’s just 
a plug in the dike at the moment, a good second-showing that the United States and this administration is against the slaughtering of horses in the United States for human consumption.”