Blog #3 Week 3

In the news article “Turning Horse Owners Into Illegal Traffickers,” by Steve Dittmer, it is stated that the U.S. House of Representatives are looking over a new law. This law outlaws the known “possession, sale, delivery or transport of horses for slaughter for human consumption.” This means that the original owner of a horse is responsible and eligible to be arrested if their horse somehow ends up going to slaughter, whether they still own it or not. I believe that this law does have good intentions, but is laid out completely wrong. The buyer who takes the horse to slaughter should be arrested, not the old owner. Although, if the old owner knowingly sent there horse to slaugher, they should get arrested. The reason why I believe that the owner who unknowingly sells their horse to someone who is going to take it to slaughter is because I have had second hand experience with this.

My friend encountered a man who comes by her stable every once in a while to try and sell horses. This time he brought a paint mare who he said that unless someone bought her, he would take her to slaughter. My friend bought her to save her life, and once the mare was rehabilitated and healthy again, she tried to sell her to a good home. The old owner, who owned the mare before the man had a hold of her, contacted my friend and said that that was her horse. She said that she had given the mare to this man because he said that he would take her up to his ranch for the following year and turn her out with his horses. If this law had been passed the woman who owned the horse would have gotten arrested because in the police’s eyes she had sent her horse off to slaughter. The author believes that this law will make horse owners look like drug dealers, it will also make it a lot harder to sell a horse, and owners will shoot their horses instead of trying to pay for them or trying to sell them. A question about this article that I would like to explore is how will the cops enforce this law? When the transporter of the horses has them all in a stock trailer, he doesn’t have any papers on the old owner or any documentation on the horses besides the proof that he owns it. How will the cops catch the old owners?

Article: http://www.agribusinessfreedom.org/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=208&Itemid=49