UNITED STATES.
HORSE SLAUGHTER.
The Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act (H.R. 503), was reintroduced Friday 16 January by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. and Representative Dan Burton (. They first introduced the bill, which will ban horse slaughter, in the summer of 2008. It gained quick bipartisan support and passed out of the Judiciary Committee but did not move further as the legislative clock wound down. Committed to seeing the measure passed into law, Chairman Conyers has given the bill priority in his committee, as signaled by its reintroduction so early on the legislative calendar. With sixty-one original cosponsors, the bill already enjoys strong bipartisan support.
Although the few remaining horse slaughter plants operating in the US were shut down in 2008 under state law, the absence of a federal law banning the practice means that American horses are still at risk of being slaughtered for human consumption. In fact, more than 100,000 horses were exported to Mexico and Canada in 2008 for slaughter; In Canada horses are shot with a captive bolt pistol, while in Mexico some plants still use the "puntilla" knife to stab the horse into a state of paralysis prior to being slaughtered, then bleeding the animal in the normal manner. The meat is then sold to high-end consumers in Russia and Asia.
This really appears to be a matter of out of sight out of mind, by the animal rights activists.
The puntila knife is very quick and very humane as long as handled by an expert, which is the same as the gun of course.
