Version of SAFE Act Passes Out of U.S. House Committee

Early Friday morning, the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed a surface transportation reauthorization bill that includes a bipartisan ban on transporting horses for slaughter, according to Chris Heyde, who runs the governmental affairs firm Blue Marble Strategy, and who has long worked on the ban, and Patrick Cummings of the National Thoroughbred Alliance.

The Van Drew-Titus amendment to the Build America 250 Act, HR 8870, shares the identical language of the Save America's Forgotten Equines Act–the SAFE Act, which has 229 cosponsors in the House. The bill would also ban the shipment of horses in double-decker trailers.

The transportation bill next moves to the floor of the House for final passage, before being taken up by the Senate.

Last year, over 25,000 horses were transported from the U.S. to slaughter in Canada or Mexico, enduring inhumane conditions on the trip, and suffering a cruel and brutal end in foreign slaughterhouses.

“This was a tremendous bipartisan win for our horses in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but we still have a long way to go before the bill is signed into law,” said Heyde. “However, the momentum and truth about the cruelty of horse slaughter won out over the outdated lies spread by those who want to profit from the horses' suffering. I want to give special thanks to Mike Repole and Pat Cummings and Fasig-Tipton as well as my coalition partners who have worked tirelessly to advance this issue. Having worked on the effort to ban slaughter for 25 years, I feel we are so close and it is time to put all our effort into getting this across the finish line this Congress.”

Heyde was engaged by Repole and Cummings's National Thoroughbred Alliance, as well as by Fasig-Tipton, to take up the cause in the hall of Congress. Members of The Jockey Club and their lobbyist as well as the NTRA also worked on the push to get the vote to pass in committee.

“It was a team effort,” said Cummings. “I don't know what one single thing put it over the top but the push that Mike has dedicated to this in the last few months surely had a massive impact in the result. We saw it in the votes. Bo Derek in November met with Mike and I on this the morning of the Breeders' Cup and she said, `Mike, this issue needs someone like you.' I think she was right, and fortunately Mike dedicated some resources to it. This was done in concert with many other organizations, advocates, lobbyists, individuals who have worked on this for a very long time. But it's still not over the line.”

The original version of the bill did not include the slaughter transportation ban. Cummings and Heyde led the effort to muster broad-based support from a cross section of the industry, collecting key thoroughbred industry constituencies to support the amendment in the final hours before the vote.

Industry members who support the ban on transportation to slaughter are urged to call their congressman to support HR 8870, the Build America 250 Act.