I’ll get the popcorn…
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Right.
Horses for pleasure, not work, have one of the larger carbon footprint of all human’s do today.
Their carbon footprint alive and once dead if their remains are not recycled for all the uses they can be made of adds to the problem.
I would say it is a bit disingenuous for those in the entertainment horse world to decry that some do make that one last use of horses once they are dead.
Now, if someone wants to bring abuse in the process of using those remains as in the slaughter industry, that is true and has to keep being worked to get the best kind of management and laws and regulations so abuse doesn’t happen.
Then, remember, that goes for ALL we do with horses, abuse happens where abusers abuse.
Abuse happens in breeding farms, training, showing, neglect even, the shame, happens in the rescue world.
Just more to think about when it comes to our use of horses, all uses we may make of them.
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Really? Horses used for pleasure create a larger carbon footprint than cattle fed up, and sent for slaughter? Where did you dig up that little factoid?
Using a horse for something “ONCE THEY ARE DEAD” in no way compares to the horrors of the slaughter pipeline. And leaving that little piece out is disingenuous in the extreme.
Slaughter is nasty. And, as we do not raise horses for slaughter in the US, the idea that it is OK here is ridiculous.
Let’s face it, breeders do NOT want to hear that you need to be able to find a place for everything from your breeding operation, but that’s where I stand on this. It can’t race? Fine. What CAN it do? If you want to celebrate your successes, don’t do it on the backs of those who aren’t in the winners circle. Find them a place where they can succeed.
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Ok well then if horses had such a large carbon footprint, and I’m not denying they do, that’s all the more reason to stop breeding 20,000 foals a year when there are not 20,000 homes for said foals. It’s more environmentally friendly to just be efficient with supply and demand rather than to just breed in reckless quantities and then send the rejects to slaughter. Maybe just don’t breed that many in the first place if the environment is your concern here.
But breeding is only a concern for a culture that decries using horses for anything other than pets, glamorous sport pets though they may be.
Other places use them for meat, etc.
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We aren’t in other places. Frankly, I do not care if the world agrees with me about this. This is the hill I will fight and die on. I used to breed horses- not a bunch, but a couple a year some times. I always knew where they were, and, occasionally I had to buy them back, or find them a better spot. There is no money in doing that, but I could sleep at night.
People will do what they will do, and I can’t change that. However, I do not have to agree with, or respect it.
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No you don’t 🤷
Thank you for at least acknowledging and owning your bias and privilege.
And I’ll presume it applies equally whether the country is European or Asian or North American.
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I will stick with the US on this one. If you have a horse that gets out of this country, and is slaughtered, shame all over you.
I may not agree with the other countries, but I won’t fight the battle anywhere else, and I won’t argue about cultural disparities.
Which is the entire point of this thread, entitled “no more tbs to South Korea.”
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I’m also just going to quote myself to again state that we have nothing to be proud of in this regard.
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Why slaughter is abhorrent but abuse, neglect, and/or shipping a horse thousands of miles to slaughter are a point of pride for some is beyond me. And by beyond me I mean abhorrent.
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And where are we talking about them coming from, for the purposes of this thread? The United States of America.
And no one in rescue is looking away. The Breeders? Maybe. In my breed, there are those who send a horse to a sale without their papers. The ASHA (now the ASBHA) fought to avoid microchips. At least many of the TBs are tattooed. While the tattoos are not always easily read, an American saddlebred without their papers is a more challenging situation. Fortunately, there are a handful of us that are pretty good at identifying them. The breed is phenotypically prepotent, And the lines seem to stamp themselves pretty well. But this doesn’t change the fact that they shouldn’t have to be found in these awful places anyway
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So, again, you support no shipping of horses to any other continent, or even to Canada or Mexico, for any purpose, based on your own personal sense of cultural superiority.
That’s a perfectly fine, albeit unrealistic, stance for you to personally have, as a person who is not impacted in any way shape or form by said sentiments.
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You are delightful!
What I said was if a horse got out of this country, and then was slaughtered, I had issue with that. You’re saying that if they leave this country for any reason then I have an issue. That’s sheer idiocy. There are horses that get sold all over the world in different sports. I don’t take issue with that. I do take issue with the idea that you sell a horse intentionally to slaughter. I take issue with the fact that you take a horse and you sell it internationally without protecting it from slaughter. And I take issue with you because you are being intentionally disingenuous about the issue.
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I pulled the 1 percent statistic from the total percent of horses going to slaughter. 1-2 percent of the horse population goes to slaughter. I was hoping someone would know the actual statistics for thoroughbreds in particular.
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The last data I’ve seen was from a FOIA request from the early 2000s and it was not good news for the tb breed. Last time I brought that up here people lost their marbles because the data was too old which is true but I also don’t see anything recent that’s promising.
In the early 2000s the TB foal crop was ~36,000 a year. Now it’s ~19,000 and dropping. That’s why that data is too old to be useful.
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True, however, you could reflect it as a percentage, and I am betting you’ d be in the realm of reality.
I respectfully disagree. The entire landscape has changed too much.
We have widespread adoption/aftercare, track-based repercussions for slaughter, RRP, TIP, etc.
On the opposite end, entire states have lost their racing and breeding programs: MI, MA, VA, OR, etc. We’ve had states’ purses rise and fall with slots and decoupling.
Drawing conclusions about the present situation from nearly 20 year old data is foolish on every level.
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