..online debate at North Platte Telegraph featuring John Holland, Click (HERE) to comment
Horse Eaters Flunk Economics
EWA President John Holland speaking at DC March for Mustangs demonstration 3/2010 ~ photo by Terry Fitch
Mr. Stenholm referred to the USDA statistics that I referenced (to show that we still have as many horses as ever going to slaughter) as “dubious numbers”. He also referred to the 900 pages of horrific images of mangled horses arriving at slaughter in Texas as “dirty pictures”. Those photos were also from the USDA and were exposed under a FOIA request.
Since Charlie apparently favors debating with adjectives rather than facts and images, I will offer a few adjectives to describe the Larson legislation; impetuous, vindictive, feckless, misguided and futile. Those were the five kindest I could conjure, and here is why.As amended, LB.306 is intended to force HSUS operated rescues to take any horse offered or face misdemeanor charges. Not only is this outrageously unfair, it is impotent because HSUS does not operate any rescues in Nebraska. So that leaves LB.305 and the “several hundred jobs” Charlie says it would bring to Nebraska.
Sorry Charlie! Sen. Larson apparently forgot to do his homework again. The farm bill language that allows states to perform inspections is limited to slaughter operations having 25 or fewer employees, and USDA officials say it doesn’t allow horse inspections at all. In the unlikely event the USDA relents on horsemeat inspections the prize is still just 25 low paying, dangerous, dehumanizing minimum wage jobs.
Let’s talk money and bureaucracy:
LB.305 would create a whole new state bureaucracy to manage an inspection system for an “industry” of no more than 25 workers. Once created, that bureaucracy would cost the taxpayers of Nebraska in perpetuity, and since ante mortem inspections require licensed veterinarians, it is probable that the real employment boom would be in this taxpayer funded government boondoggle.
To gauge what this investment might provide in returns, consider the smallest of the US plants which employed between 33 and 42 people. Dallas Crown 2004 Tax filings, exposed during their fight with the town, show they had gross receipts of $12,007,611 on which they paid $5 in federal taxes and gave $3 to charity
The horsemeat market is controlled by foreign corporations who have a stranglehold on the distribution. An American company would have no choice but to sell to this cartel at whatever price they were offered.
This is precisely what happened in Canada when the Natural Valley Farms plant began killing horses for Cavel’s parent corporation Velda, LLC (Belgium). The plant finally went bankrupt with losses of $44 million dollars and Velda moved on, leaving a financial and ecological wasteland behind them.
There is little in this for the horse industry either. A study by Deloitte Consulting estimated the horse industry produces a $102 billion total economic impact. Horse slaughter accounts for approximately $36 million of this income, meaning it contributes only about 3 cents of every $100 generated by the horse industry. And it gets worse.
Wyoming and Montana both passed similarly ill-conceived laws and have yet to attract a slaughter plant. Central Nebraska Packing has said it does not intend to reopen its horse slaughter operation and it is unlikely Nebraska will attract another plant given the substantial risk that federal legislation could eventually shut it down.
Moreover, it is entirely likely that the European Union will continue to restrict its horsemeat imports on safety grounds, and changes in federal law would put a new US plant under FDA oversight. The FDA bans most common horse medications from food animals and classifies horses as companion animals.
Larson’s bills are just the latest examples of reckless, ill-conceived and ineffective state legislation spurred on by the “animal rights” fear mongering of lobbyists like Charlie.
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