DRIVER IN HORSE TRAILER CRASH CITED!

Driver in horse trailer wreck cited - WSMV Channel 4

LATEST UPDATE ON TRAILER CRASH IN TN. IT WAS AS BAD AS WE THOUGHT!

Video Landing Page - Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee

TRAILER CRASH IN TENNESSEE.

3 horses killed after tractor trailer overturns on I-40 - WKRN, Nashville, Tennessee News, Weather and Sports |

Any of you people who attend the races see the trailer that is there waiting for all the horses are not making any money? Loaded right at the track and headed for slaughter. No one looking for a home or someone who wants a registered horse. Just throw on the trailer and go to slaughter, quick and easy "disposal" If you don't think it's about money........think again.If you don't think it's about "disposal" think again. Theses horses more than likely DO have meds in their bodies, they are athletes but they will be gone and slaughtered within a few days!

SLAUGHTER IS NOT THE ANSWER FOR EQUINE OVERPOPULATION!

• I found this over on Jerry's blog, in response to the $1000 challenge. It's one of the best responses I've ever seen and it's too long to post in the regular comments: Leslie Chaffin January 14, 2012 at 2:17 am OK, grab a cup of coffee, this turned out to be much more than I had intended. And no, you don’t need your flamesuit. For those of you who are steeped in this, I know I’m preaching to the choir…. The process from sale barn to slaughterhouse is perhaps more painful, terrorizing and horrific for the horse as the one that has been abandoned by a lazy owner. And it is laziness as it doesn’t take much to find help with the speed of the internet these days.   I see many emails going around to help people who find they need to re-home their horses. The community steps up. A recent situation involving more than 80 horses needing help brought in hay donations, feed, dollars and people stepping up to adopt to help out. Abandoned horses are not the result of not having a slaughter option because slaughter has never NOT been an option. There were as many abused and abandoned horses with plants in the U.S. as there have been without. The problem is PEOPLE who don’t really give a damn. As Ron White says “you can’t fix stupid.”   Guess what? That you have felt the weight on your shoulders, knowing you couldn’t help all the homeless horses you know about and it makes you a “wreck” says you DO care. So for those you can’t help directly, call people who can help. For those you see in a pasture starving, make a call to report cruelty and encourage others to do the same. There are cruelty laws in 37 states now and most include neglect. Help network the horses that come to your attention to get their information into the hands of someone who can help.   If you track the news related to horse rescue/cruelty, reports fairly recently, of more than 5300 horses abandoned at the U.S. Mexico border were traced back to kill buyers who just turned them loose when they were rejected at the slaughterhouse. Since the USDA doesn’t follow once the horse has been across the border, this has gone unchecked–and you can bet that the kill buyers knew this. For these horses, there will be no justice as it will be near impossible to track down the kill buyers who did this. I think of the ranch where 700 starving horses had hay airlifted to them because the owner essentially abandoned them because he was in bankruptcy. At least the owner was up on charges, but in my opinion, the resulting sentence still wasn’t enough based on the number of horses involved. Only 6-8% of horses going to slaughter are so old or infirm that their owners should have had them mercifully put down. And there are rescues will provide assistance to owners who need to do this and can’t afford it even if they are in other states–Lifesavers, Inc. and Front Range Equine are two I know of. Jerry–does Habitat for Horses?   Because U.S. horses are not raised for food like cattle as they are in Europe and Russia, the EU has gotten wise and implemented regulations regarding U.S. horse meat with some shops in Europe refusing to take any U.S. horse meat because most is not fit for human consumption due to supplements, anti-inflammatory and pain drugs that are designated as a danger for humans to ingest. Since most horses purchased at auction do not come with a life history of medications, expect that more and more horses will be rejected.   The last figure I saw is that about 14% of the horses are rejected and I’m sure this will grow. What happens to these horses? Again, the most recent reports show they are starving to death in holding pens because a kill buyer won’t feed a horse they can’t sell–he’s already lost money on it. So how is this better than the owner abandoning the horse? It is naive to think that once a horse is sold to a kill buyer that it goes to the plant, is “humanely” killed and then processed. It isn’t. Just watch the videos readily available on YouTube of horses at Canadian or Mexican slaughterhouses and see what really happens. I’ve cried every time.   Overpopulation begins and ends with breed associations, breeders and horse owners. Breeders need to produce based on demand. Backyard breeding should be by very expensive permit only. There should be regulations that require breeders to geld any colt sold as a pleasure riding prospect and quite frankly, most people do not know how to properly train a stallion anyway. (Yes, I have had a stallion and he could be shown nose to tail with mares in a show ring and no one knew he was a stallion.) And yes, I used to breed performance horses, but when the market tanked in the late 1980s, we had the good sense to stop breeding. And when each of my horses had reached that point whether by injury or illness due to age, each was humanely euthanized. Even when I had lost my job and no longer were we a two income household, we found the money because it is what you do for a faithful companion.   Imagine, since we know that there are at least 100,000 too many horses for the market if federal regulation said that all of the horse industry would have to figure out how to produce 100,000 less horses? That slaughter is not an option. If the Equine Protection Act were passed, that is exactly what would have to happen because NO horse could be transported for the purpose of slaughter for human consumption. As long as slaughter is an option, the industry does not have to deal with the problem. It is convenient. It is an excuse. Like the lazy owner who abandons his horse to starve, the lazy horse industry has chosen to abandon the horses that go to slaughter every year rather than dealing with the real problem which the industry has created.   What any of us can do who are involved in rescue is exactly what you express: we help as much as we can. It is the truism that we face every day–we help the ones we can in whatever way that we can and yes, we shed tears for the ones that we can’t. There are days we don’t want to open our email or look at our Facebook page. It is a never ending stream of horses, donkeys, dogs, cats even goats, lamas, birds and bunnies that need homes, have been found as strays in terrible condition, are on the kill list at shelters, the list goes on and on.   Yet we share, network with others in rescue, and work to get the ones we can to safety. More than 4 million cast off cats and dogs will be euthanized in shelters this year, yet community after community is reaching no kill status. If everyone were required to spay/neuter to have a pet, the impact it would have on this number would be tremendous, some say up to a reduction of 75%. If 20% of the people who want a pet adopted instead of bought from a breeder, it would reduce the number euthanized every year to 1.5 million.   Thus, applying these same ideas to horses, imagine the impact of requiring gelding, having to have a permit for breeding ANY horse, if people would look to adoption instead of purchase, imagine how much of an impact that would have in reducing 100,000-130,000 horses going to slaughter instead going to homes. Add to this people being willing to get involved when they see a neglected horse–calling the authorities if the owner won’t listen or accept help. And as with small animals, if more people step up to foster, more can be taken in by rescues.   We recognize that because there are scum out there who really don’t care about their animals horses or otherwise, we will likely never be able to save them all. But we save as many as we can. That is all that anyone can do. Sometimes the hardest ones to loose are the ones that the kill buyers outbid the rescues on. And believe me, I’ve seen plenty of accounts where the kill buyer knew a rescue wanted a horse and kept bidding it up. Or settled outside the auction pen, holding the horse for “ransom” so to speak at twice the price the kill buyer just paid. I know for the PMU mares I have that were rescued years ago, I paid at least twice what the farmer would have gotten at a kill auction for them. But that’s what was required for the RESCUE to be able to get them out.   But because we feel deeply and passionately that EVERY horse should have a caring home, we do not see slaughter as an option. We are disgusted with an industry that refuses to acknowledge it has a problem that only it can fix by doing what every other business in the country has had to do, especially in this recession–cut back on production and regulate the “backyard breeder” not only to reduce overpopulation, but also to ensure breed standards aren’t compromised. We are disgusted with an industry that sees slaughter as a method of “disposal” when it claims to care about the welfare of horses.   We are angry at a do-nothing Congress that has had four years to pass legislation that would end slaughter and the transport to slaughter for horses, and instead allows the USDA to have a line item in its budget to inspect horse slaughter plants.   Believe me, anyone involved in rescue, and those like Jerry who live with it day in and day out, have days when they ask themselves how they will take one more day filled with people telling them about horses in desperate need whether in someone’s pasture or at the local auction barn. We ALL have sleepless nights worrying, and for the rescues, often worrying about how they will pay for the feed and vet care or how they can take even one more horse.   I hope you will re-think your position that slaughter is a humane option. It isn’t. It is a cruel business from the auction pen to the slaughterhouse and they care nothing whatsoever about the horses. Slaughter plants themselves were a blight on the communities in which they operated. I believe Straight from the Horse’s Heart had a column about this from people in Texas who were relieved when Texas made slaughter illegal and the plant closed.   Again, it is naive to think that U.S. plants were somehow “better” than those across our borders though the pro-slaughter camp continuously claims this when it is simply a myth. A horse slaughter plant is a slaughter plant wherever it is located. Its purpose and nature does not change just because it is in the U.S. Our government recently rescinded the ban on downer cows and mistreatment of them as they caved to pressure from the industry. So once again these poor animals that can’t get up and walk will be shoved around with forklifts, no telling how much they will be bruised, battered and beaten just to get them, terrified, into a kill chute. Slaughter as a whole is not a humane industry. None of us has all the answers. But we know with certainty that slaughter is NOT an acceptable solution to addressing equine overpopulation

HORSE SUMMIT COMES UNDER FRIENDLY FIRE?

THIS IS CRAZY AND AMAZING, READ WHOLE ARTICLE! Many of us have been banned for the Summit of the Horse FB page and some like Brogan Horton an anti slaughter advocate from attending the Summit.. Apparently no one with a "record" can attend. HMMM maybe they better check out their guest speakers.........Trent Loos, the summit's Master of Ceremonies, for example, is a convicted cattle felon and presenter Dave Cattoor plead guilty to a lesser charge of stealing wild mustangs.http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=omaglqdab&v=001SbPU0nO9dPDIzj-bZrvfo6KGwJMzhQ-vC9jl28e_jSyBU9Hgbv9amuANPq66ce53YcLtaDpP8ddasekHkAMKoUHXSlst3cb3