It's about time.
Slaughtering horses is a touchy subject. But as a horse owner and lifetime horse lover, I feel like I can comment on the subject with both my heart and my head. For the record, I am morally opposed to slaughter, but I can afford to be. I am a responsible horse owner. I don't own more horses than I can afford to take care of. My male horses are gelded, and I have no plans to breed my mare.
Horses have a shared history with man, working alongside him in the capacity of machine before there were steam or diesel engines. Horses were the early day embodiment of tanks, the tractor to pull the plow, the ATV for rounding up the cattle, the tug boats for pulling barges along rivers, the train for moving people west in stagecoach, the fed-ex airplanes of their day in the clothes of the Pony Express, and even today they serve as the police vehicle for crowd control in many cities. Wherever you find the history of man, you find beside him the horse and the dog.
But.
Horses aren't house pets. They aren't even backyard companion pets. There are city ordinances against keeping a horse in your backyard in most residential neighborhoods. Horses are classified as livestock, the same designation as cattle, pigs, goats, and chickens. True that their role as livestock is very different from that of the animals we Americans eat, but that's because their historical and emotional value to us goes beyond their value as a meat animal. Regardless - they are livestock just the same.
At the same time, I love my horses and I am horrified by the problem that closing the plants in the United States 6 years ago created. There is a huge problem with unwanted horses in this country. They went from being a champion cause for PETA during the debates for closing the plants to a complete nightmare for local equine rescue organizations, who haven't got the resources to house the huge increase in unwanted horses that now have no bottom dollar value.
Do a google search for equine rescue. They'll have "before" pictures of their current adoption animals. Those photos are graphic and you'd best have a strong stomach before you look. Here's the link to my own local rescue - Blazes Equine Rescue - who are doing an amazing job in the face of overwhelming odds.
The problem is currently the same one as the one we face with abandoned kittens and puppies, with the exception that horses are usually contained and more visible, and owners who can't support them just leave them to fend for themselves. The number of cruelty cases has skyrocketed. The number of neglect cases is unbelievable. The number of horses living unseen miserable, invisible existences is beyond my ability to even comprehend. At that's just in my own state. Multiply that by 50.
The anti-slaughter coalition's solution, "just don't breed," was about as successful as the current campaign for "new gun legislation." You can't tell free Americans what they can and cannot do with their property and their civil rights.
The tragedy is this. American horses are still going to slaughter. The original legislation simply removed the provision for federal inspections of the American processing plants. Without inspection, the meat could not be sold. But that did not eliminate the market demand. So horses in the northern parts of the United States have been transported to Canada. Those living in the southern part of the United States have been transported to Mexico.
Transport is a euphanistic word for "traveling long distances in overcroweded trailers packed in like sardines with no rest stops and no water for the duration of the journey. Animals lucky enough to arrive alive are met with crowded conditions and minimal if any humane care for injuries sustained during the long journey to their last stop.
What has been happening to American horses in most of the Mexican processing plants is cruel and inhumane. There is no "captive bolt" or "quick death." There is a butcher knife shoved through the top of the neck and into the spinal cord, then the animal is strung up, still conscious, to bleed out. There's video available on You-Tube if you have the stomach for it. I couldn't watch it. The first images are still giving me nausea and nightmares.
Mexican Equine Slaughter Plant Footage
I'm not a crusader. You won't find me sending money to PETA. I don't make a difference in the lives of any horses but the ones that come in contact with me. But now that you know, you need to think about where you stand on this issue. And my stand is this:
By making it possible for the processing plants to reopen in America, we are at least providing the opportunity for our unwanted horses to meet a dignified and humane end, with a continued usefulness and service to us after their lives are over. And that's infinitely better than a miserable life.
I'm going outside now and give Java, Charlie, and Buddy a hug.
Reference Links :
Idaho Horse Council
Washington Times
Temple Grandin
My random thoughts about the Connecticut tragedy, based on 34 years in the public sector of education, as a parent and as a teacher.
The shooter's mom (I refuse to post his name because that gives him more of a public forum than he already has) being associated with the school as a part time employee meant that he was most PROBABLY recognized as a family member, which would have PROBABLY prevented the alarm bells ringing in the heads of anyone seeing him in the hallway.
***Updated reports say his mom wasn't a teacher. Even so, based on the size of the community, this guy would have been known. He attended school in the town - which has only one HS and one MS. People knew him, knew what his issues were, and still never perceived him as a threat. Odd, certainly, but not threatening.
Secondly, there are procedures in place in schools for registering visitors. You can require visitors to register as they come in, and you can intercept them in the hallway if you don't recognize them - assuming that there are people IN the hallway to see them, which often isn't the case. But the security measures at any school are only as good as the location of the front office and the convenience of the public. You can't keep ALL the doors locked ALL the time. It's just a physical/logistical impossibility.
Parents start complaining about having the doors locked so they can't walk right in and pick up their kid for a lunch outing. Students start complaining because they can't get back into the building when they have to pass from one building to another for things like recess or the library or to another class or lunch. Teachers start complaining because they forgot their key to get back into the building from a quick errand to their vehicle to grab the science demonstration equipment that they brought with them from home because the school didn't have the funds to pony up for the hands-on activity materials. Yes, today, that all seems reasonable, but in six months, when the new of our national grief has worn soft, it'll be happening all over the nation again - especially in small town America where everyone knows everyone else and everyone feels safe.
In my opinion, this whole tragedy is defined by our collective attention to three issues.
#1. HEALTH INSURANCE
#2. MENTAL HEALTH HOUSING
#3. PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDS.
Health insurance - what a hot potato topic. Poor people can't afford it, middle class hope that their company will help offset the cost of an affordable option, wealthy folks don't even think of it AS an issue. Good health insurance will SOMETIMES provide for mental health counseling, if you are willing to pay an additional cost for a rider. But it's not "standard." It should be, but it's not. Universal health insurance - in my state at least - is still "up for debate" and jostling for position on how to NOT make it happen because we want to keep our tax dollars for ourselves for our own private use.
We used to provide housing and treatment for severely mentally ill people, including children. But somewhere along the road, the rights of the severely mentally ill took priority over the rights of the rest of us to keep ourselves safe from what they are capable of doing. We quit being willing to pay the costs of these housing facilities with our collective tax dollars. We closed facility after facility. We started housing them in the prisons, treating them while they were in house, hoping they would continue to treat themselves when they were paroled. Because no-one stays in prison forever until they do something so horrible that they are sentenced for life or death, depending on your state's attitude about the matter.
Well, here's a news flash. These people are severely mentally ill, which by definition makes them incapable of self treatment, and our answer to that is to leave them to cope with their paranoia and delusions on their own, with no structured support system in place beyond having a parole officer with an overloaded case file. Meanwhile, we find them nothing more than a minor annoyance when we step over them in the doorways of our cities, and only give them serious attention when one of them demands our attention with heinous acts like the one committed in Connecticut.
There is nowhere for these people to BE treated unless you are blessed with enough private funds to provide for the expense - and it's not as simple as "I'd do whatever I could to make sure that it got done." In doubt? Watch "Waiting For Superman" to see how hopeless it can be to want to "do whatever you can" to realize just how little you can do.
As a nation, we are pathetic about the way we fund public education. We've begun seeing charter schools as a panacea for the problems of public education without doing the homework required to research their effectiveness. The Nation's Report Card has posted a report on a study that shows charter school students, on average, score LOWER than students in traditional public schools. We are abandoning the public schools in a mad rush to the bottom. Security in a school system takes personnel and it takes technology. Both of those things require FUNDING - funding for metal detectors, funding for security cameras, funding for security locks, funding for security guards. Schools can't pay for these kinds of security measures. Schools can't even afford TEXTBOOKS and TEACHERS right now because WE won't fund the schools.
Look at the recent issues in Chicago and tell yourself how you felt about striking teachers a few months ago and then think about what happened in Connecticut and think for just a minute, not about the children who died, but the ones who survived because a TEACHER was there to protect them and give up HER life for the lives of her students - without thought, without hesitation - just like a soldier on a battlefield. What's the likelihood that you'll get shot at your job this week?
Until we are ALL willing to step up to the plate and say to ourselves and to each other that we are WILLING to pay collectively for services that protect ALL of us at the expense of EACH of us, well things are not going to change much. We will all continue to be vulnerable to the next lunatic, at which point we'll spend a few weeks arguing and moaning about gun control which only puts a band-aid on the problem, and then puts it on the wrong wound anyway.
My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the wounded community in Connecticut this week. I hope this tragedy wakes us up for a lot longer than the 15 minute sound bite that is typical of our collective attention span. But in the meantime, I'll be praying for the rest of us as we continue down our own delusional paths of selfish and egocentric isolationism.
On November 6, 2012, Election Day, we will exercise our right to choose.
Some of us will choose to vote for Barack Obama.
Some of us will choose to vote for Mitt Romney.
Some of us will choose to vote for another candidate.
Some of us will choose not to vote.
During the day of November 6, 2012, we will make different choices for different reasons, hoping for different results.
But that evening, while our nation turns its attention to the outcome of the presidential election, lets again choose differently. But this time, let's do it together.
Let's meet at the same table, with the same host, to remember the same things.
Let's remember that real power in this world - the power to save, to transform, to change - ultimately rests not in political parties or presidents or protests, but in the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.
Let's remember that, through the Holy Spirit, this power dwells within otherwise ordinary people, who as one body continue the mission of Jesus: preaching good news to the poor, freeing the captives, giving sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed, and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor (Luke 4:16-21).
Let's remember that freedom - true freedom - is given by God and is indeed not free. It comes with a cost and it looks like a cross.
Let's remember our sin and our need to repent.
Let's remember that the only Christian nation in this world is the Church, a holy nation that crosses all human-made boundaries and borders.
Let's remember that our passions are best placed within the passion of Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2).
Let's remember that we do not conform to the patterns of this world, but we are transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2).
Let's remember that God's strength is made perfect in weakness.
And let's remember that the body of Christ as the body of Christ, confessing the ways in which partisan politics has separated us from one another and from God.
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Many churches across our nation are participating in an Election Day Communion. I challenge you to find out if there is one in your local area, to attend, and to help me begin healing the divisions and broken relationships that this election season has created between us
Here's the link to Election Day Communion
