In Arizona: Wallis’ Wyoming Horse Slaughter Plant Plans Turn Flaky

Monday, January 3, 2011

Wallis’ Wyoming Horse Slaughter Plant Plans Turn Flaky

“Slaughterhouse” Sue Wallis Can’t Get Story Straight

"Slaughterhouse" Sue Wallis

Chicago (EWA) – In an interview on January 1st with the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, horse slaughter promoter Sue Wallis announced yet another change in plans for her proposed Wyoming horse slaughter plant. The plant will not use facilities in Cheyenne. It also won’t sell horsemeat for human consumption, it won’t be designed by Temple Grandin and won’t open this year as previously announced.

Wallis had initially announced that she planned to open a horse slaughter plant to provide horse meat to Wyoming state prisoners and school children. When that plan was criticized it began to change.

On April 28th of last year, Wallis had announced in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle that she was negotiating to take over the Cheyenne Stockyards as an “intake facility” for a mobile slaughter operation. She claimed the plant would be designed by renowned slaughter plant designer Temple Grandin even though Grandin normally designs complex fixed facilities that specialize in reducing stress and fear in animals before they are slaughtered. The apparent discrepancy was not explained.

On September 14th of last year Wallis wrote a Prairie Star article titled Wyoming proceeds with plans to build state-of-the-art processing plant. In that article, Wallis stated that the plant would provide horse meat for human consumption within Wyoming, admitting that the meat could not be exported across state lines because Congress removed funding for required federal inspectors in 2006. Wallis predicted the plant could open in as little as six months.

Again Wallis touted her relationship with Temple Grandin, substituting a “state-of-the-art” facility for the earlier plan to use mobile killing vans and fixed staging facilities. In the most recent interview Wallis admits negotiations over the stockyards failed but contradicts her earlier statements. Wallis now claims the facilities were never planned to be part of the slaughter operation but rather a kind of “training facility”.

In November, a published analysis issued by the Equine Welfare Alliance predicted that such a plan would not be feasible. That prediction was followed by an ethics complaint filed against Wallis by a Wyoming resident and the announcement by Temple Grandin that she would no longer permit Sue Wallis to use her name in conjunction with the ever changing plans.

The ethics complaint filed by Patricia Fazio, PhD claimed among other things that Wallis had committed securities violations when she promoted an “investment opportunity“ in the slaughter operation that she called Unified Equine, LLC. At the time of the announcement there was no such corporation. Months later Wallis later created a corporate shell for the company.

Even so, the offering of securities to third parties is a complex process involving an offering memorandum with disclosures about every aspect of the operation. The soliciting of such investments is tightly regulated by law.

The latest announcement is puzzling in that the plans now concern only killing horses for zoo meat. There are almost no regulatory restrictions on such an operation and there are several small operations in the US that currently kill horses for that purpose.

At this point, Wallis’ plans have been scaled back to such an extent that her timeframe seems excessive. Most zoo meat slaughter operations, like Bravo Packing in New Jersey, are backyard operations. Wallis could start such an operation right in her own backyard tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Wallis appears to have no problem getting reporters to publish her ever changing plans. One thing is clear; the gleaming slaughterhouse on the hill offering dozens of well paying jobs has begun to tarnish and shrink.