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  • 2017-08-08 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Congress Vote to Allow Horses to Be Slaughtered for Food? (en)
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  • On 4 August 2017, conservative web site World Net Daily reported that Republicans have voted to allow horses to be slaughtered for food in the United States: No specific vote to that effect was cast; Congress did pass a spending bill opening the door for that to happen in 2011 — but two bills approved in July 2017 by the House Appropriations Committee did ease its previous stances on the issue. On July 12 2017, the committee approved the Agriculture Appropriations Bill for the 2018 fiscal year, but unlike previous iterations of the bill, this one did not include an amendment blocking funding for United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors to visit facilities where horses are being slaughtered. That provision was part of a spending bill passed by Congress in 2011, which effectively constituted a slaughter ban because any meat sold in the U.S. must be approved by the USDA. The Fiscal Year 2017 version of the bill, for example, contained this amendment by Reps. Charlie Dent (R-Pennsylvania) and Sam Farr (D-California): Another Democratic lawmaker from California, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, introduced her own amendment banning slaughter inspections in the 2018 fiscal year version of the bill, but it was struck down in a 27-25 vote. Six days after the committee approved the agriculture bill, it approved the 2018 Fiscal Year Interior and Environment Bill, which contained an amendment by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) removing language concerning a ban on the destruction of healthy, unadopted wild horses and burros on the part of the Bureau of Land Management or its contractors. The committee has not released the full markup of the bill. But according to Stewart's office, the amended version reads in part: The lifting of the ban potentially affects a reported 67,000 wild horses. During debate on the bill, Stewart said that the horses are crowding out the deer and the elk and destroying the range. He also reiterated his disdain for the idea of slaughtering horses for food: Another bill (H.R. 113, a.k.a. the Safeguard American Food Exports Act of 2017) was introduced in the House in January 2017 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Florida): The measure was referred to the House Subcommittee on Health on 25 January 2017. On 3 August 2017, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) and three of his colleagues introduced a companion to Buchanan's bill which would permanently ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption in the United States and the export of horse meat or the transport of horses to slaughterhouses in other countries. (en)
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