OpEd by R.T. Fitch ~ Author/President Wild Horse Freedom Federation
Do the Math and the Horse-Eaters Tank
Do the Math and the Horse-Eaters Tank
The God of Horse Slaughter Fanatics
When it comes to the years that we have all been working to ensure that predatory horse slaughter stays out of the United States I rank way down on the food chain of the "Who’s Who in Equine Advocacy." There are many more knowledgeable and eloquent individuals such as Jerry Finch and John Holland, and many others, who carried the torch long before my eyes were opened and my heart-broken by the butchering of companion animals for the profit of foreign interests.
But one thing that I do possess is a nose for business and, at the very least, the ability to know what makes a product profitable versus being a dog on the market and it does NOT take a Ph.D. in economics to see that horse slaughter not only tanked in this country, but it will never amount to anything, again.
We could take some time and examine the lack of credibility and the total expendability of the disposable non-educated who act as the voice for special interest groups in expounding on the untruths of how wonderful and great eating your best equine friends can be, but we won’t, today.
Likewise we could look at their backers and dig into the why, what, when and where they exploit and perpetuate lies against American horses in order to further another bloody agenda that they hold near and dear to their stone cold hearts but we won’t, let’s save that for desert for another day.
Instead, let’s look at some grade school math that the horse-eaters don’t want the public to be aware of, the truth about why horse slaughter was never successful in the U.S. and never will be. Remember, the last three plants in the U.S. were owned by foreign companies who collected the money and sold tainted horse flesh to foreign interests. Virtually nothing went into the local communities and nothing enriched the United States. Horse slaughter was and will always be a total failure.
But to the math; yesterday Purdue University released the results of a study they conducted on the impact of equine businesses in the small, mid-western state of humble Indiana and lo and behold they found out that the business of living horses produced in excess of 2 Billion, yes BILLION, dollars in the state over the calendar year of 2010. What? I thought the horse industry had crumbled since the crappy little foreign slaughter houses closed, even though more horses are slaughtered now, across the border, than before they were closed. What could this mean in a state that is not even known for its horses?
Well, its simple, folks, and this is not something that someone needs a college education to figure out, you just need to be able add two plus two to figure out that a LIVE horse is worth more than a DEAD horse any day of the week. Any horse, regardless of breed, discipline or disposition, costs money to maintain and by spending that money a variety of businesses profit from the live equines that they support. Feed stores, Vets, tack supplies, trailer businesses, and the list goes on and on. A viable and healthy horse sold into slaughter, that is all the kill buyers look for, is a dead-end, no pun intended, for everyone including the horse. For a few hundred bucks it is the end of the line for the horse and any equine business that supports the industry, full stop.
Let’s allow the numbers to talk and only use Indiana’s figure of $2,000,000,000.00 as a base line.
If kill buyers got, let’s say, $500.00 per horse, which is very high, to sell them off to a torturous and inhumane slaughter plant, how many horses would Indiana have to sell to slaughter to reap the same benefits as dealing with an economy centered around caring for live horses? Do have any idea? The answer is 4,000,000 horses. Yup 4 MILLION horses would have to be sold to slaughter to reach $2 billion in gross sales.
Hmmmm, nationwide the kill buyers are sending about 125,000 horses across the border to their deaths which only accounts for $62,500,000 in gross, really gross, national sales. Not real spell binding stuff, and when the three plants were open, they were stealing the dreams from about 100,000 horses a year. Not a real money-maker and maybe, just maybe the reason there was not a single U.S. owned company was dumb enough to be involved with horse slaughter in the U.S.
Is any of this making any sense?
It probably makes damn good sense to the 75% of the U.S. public that is vehemently opposed to brutally slaughtering and eating America’s best friend, but it sure seems to fly over the heads of the minority who have turned killing horses into a fanatical cult which extols bloody barbarism, uses fraud to further their cause, ignores proven science and threatens the food supply of the U.S., if not the entire world.
And for what cause; simple…money and the need to feed narcissistic egos. There are a lot of emotionally challenged individuals out there and it is a crying shame that they not only have a collective voice, but often times their insane din drowns out the call of the sane.
That is something that we must work on and work on, NOW!
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Jo Bunny, Equine Welfare Alliance, adds this: The American Horse Council statistics on the economic impact of the live equine industry by state since 2005 can be found here. Here is a study on the impact of the live equine industry in Virginia.
Note also a 2005 University of Maine study on the live equine industry in the Northeast.