Slaughter-bound Wind River mare Wonderful Grace and 6 foals rescued from a CO kill pen arrive at TCF equine vet Dr. Lisa Jacobson’s ranch in late August of 2023 to start their highway to freedom.
March 1 was Nationwide Horse Safety Day, we needed to check out an essential pending federal laws to guard our beloved equines – the Save America’s Forgotten Equines, or SAFE Act, H.R.3475/S.2037.
What’s the SAFE Act? It will amend the 2018 Canine and Cat Meat Commerce Prohibition Act, which bans the slaughter of canine and cats for human consumption, by including the phrases “or equines” to the prohibition – thus defending our nation’s most beloved companion animal species from the horrors of the slaughter course of.
Roughly 20,000 American equines are exported yearly to meat firms in Canada and Mexico, the place they’re topic to horrible cruelty earlier than being butchered and their meat exported to overseas international locations for human consumption — together with China and Russia. For many years, advocates have labored to get this essential invoice handed, however regardless of broad public assist, our efforts have been thwarted by the political affect of meat trade teams.
However now we have now a two-pronged alternative to get the protections wanted.
First, Congress is now contemplating the 2023 Farm Invoice, a must-pass piece of laws that was the automobile for passing the Canine and Cat Meat Commerce Prohibition Act in 2018. As with that invoice, we’re asking Congress so as to add the SAFE Act as an modification to the 2023 Farm Invoice.
Second, even when the Farm Invoice technique is unsuccessful, the SAFE Act will proceed as a free-standing invoice that Congress can cross by itself deserves. A majority of Home members have signed onto the invoice making it eligible for a committee listening to, but it stays caught with no listening to scheduled.
Right here is the place we most want your advocacy — to persuade Congress to schedule the invoice for a listening to so it advances to the complete Home for a vote.
The slaughter pipeline is an unimaginably horrific expertise for horses and different equines. As pure prey animals they expertise excessive distress and terror all through the method. The complete slaughter pipeline — together with the fear and chaos of the public sale barns and kill pens, the distress of transport on crowded vans to Canada and Mexico, and the killing itself — is incapable of being humane.
If we’re unsuccessful in including the SAFE Act as an modification to the 2023 Farm Invoice, it is going to be one other FIVE YEARS earlier than we have now one other Farm Invoice alternative. Equally, if we’re unsuccessful in getting it to maneuver ahead as a free-standing invoice, we must wait till the subsequent Congress in 2025 to start the method once more.
In different phrases, the time to behave is NOW – and what higher time than Nationwide Horse Safety Day?
Please give this laws a glance. If, like so many, you’re feeling that it’s time to take our equines out of the slaughter pipeline – as we did for our canine and cats – please let your congressional representatives know that you simply assist H.R. 3475/S. 2037 – The SAFE Act of 2023.
Please be part of us in working to make a big influence in eradicating slaughter for America’s horses — wild and home.
The Cloud Basis
www.thecloudfoundation.org
