PETA Sees Benefit to US Horse Slaughter

Congress’ new spending bill ending an effective ban on domestic horse slaughter may sound like a custom-made PETA target—but actually, the group sees some good in the change, the Los Angeles Times reports. Activists say it’s better to allow the slaughter of horses inside the US than to export them for slaughter. “To reduce suffering, there should be a ban on the export of live horses, even if that means opening slaughterhouses in the US again,” the group says in a statement.

For horses, exporting means “a frightening, long, and miserable journey to Canada or Mexico to meet their end in slaughterhouses there,” PETA notes. Such travel is “often in vehicles with low ceilings in which horses must hunch over, slipping and sliding on their own waste.” For the group, another benefit of the legislation is that it will draw attention to the practice of horse slaughter, the Times notes. Of course, the statement concludes, activists would prefer to “ban slaughter in the US and ban the export of live horses so that no one is slaughtering America's horses." (More PETA stories.)