It doesn't matter if you love animals, or if you don't. The way they are being treated under the guise of "food" or for "humane" purposes, slaughtering animals the way we, and I way "we" loosely, do is one of the most accepted forms of animal cruelty there is.
All of the photos PETA, Mercy For Animals, Compassion Over Killing, United Poultry Concerns, Farm Animal Rights Movement, Gentle Giants, or a hundred other movements post about any animal that is being abominably treated by humans, are horrific. What they are meant to do is to spur everyone who sees them into getting out of their comfort zones, and doing something to alleviate the pain of another living being.
Who are we to say what is cruel or what is humane? If an animal is cognizant of what is happening, is in abject terror, is suffering unspeakable pain, and is absolutely suffering prior to death, that is cruel. The same goes for an animal that is used for its skin. If you wear fur, you are a partaker in its suffering.
The point of this is to change that. There is a bill in the House, still sitting there, that allows horse slaughter houses to be reintroduced into the US. Through an organization called Gentle Giants, a draft horse rescue, I read about this, where the words, "humane slaughter" are being used to make sense of the over population of horses, through backyard breeders, the horse racing industry, and hoarders, who either cannot afford to keep the horses any more, or they don't make money any more, or the good intention was over run by a psychological need to be the caretaker of too many animals, the horse slaughter houses are as inhumane as it gets.
I won't go into detail, but it does not 'down' the horse into instant death, as we would like to or have been led to believe. Often the bolt gun is ineffectual, and only agonizingly injures the still standing horse, or you have the infamous "meat men" of Mexico, who mercilessly stab the horse until they are in pain, disabled, and down, but not out, and then the slaughter begins.
We are supposedly an evolving species. I would beg you to write your congressman, your senators, to ban horse slaughter in this country, ban the transport of horses to Canada or Mexico, for slaughter, and stop the trade in horse meat that France, Belgium, and Japan, eat. But even there, in Europe, there is the struggle to stop the slaughter of horses.
This is a breeding problem. This slaughter is on horses you could have owned, could have loved, and ridden, and taught your kids to ride on. This is on horses that could have loved you.
By the by, I've not put pictures of horses in this blog post, because you expect it. Or maybe, because I cannot find the great one of my draft horse, Bella to put up. Either way, sometimes, the peace of a landscape can do more to engender a sense of beauty and calm, than the picture of the topic, which is in so much need of our help.
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