First of all, as a horse owner, I cannot emphasize enough the horses are not fit for human consumption. Horses regularly receive vaccinations, medications and dewormers. Dewormers (i.e., small doses of poison), depending on the type used, can be given anywhere from once a month to once daily. And grass-fed, horses are not. Most owners give their animals commercial food pellets, in addition to hay or grass. Horse feed can contain anything from fish meal to soybeans, corn, oats and barley, most of which, I would suspect, isn't organic. Unscrupulous breeders will also administer growth hormones or steroids. Horses going to slaughter can be older animals as well, meaning that they have had time to develop diseases.

Secondly, American breeds far too many horses for every animal to find a home, whether it be in a racing barn or a children's lesson program. I find it fitting that the AQHA supports slaughter houses, considering that it's also the largest breed association in the United States – and one that's breed standards often produce unfit horses that break down young. See an AQHA "halter horse," and you see an animal unfit to be ridden – it's only choices are the show ring or the breeding barn.

The United States also sees excessive breeding from the racing industry, which produces hundreds of thousands of "losers" each year. While these animals can find second careers in other disciplines (dressage, jumping, hunting, eventing, pleasure horse), etc., the overflow is simply too great, especially in tough economic times.

And don't even get me started on Premarin.

When a local horse rescue told an owner that they were at capacity and could only accept dire cases of abuse and neglect, he drove a few miles down the road, unloaded the horses from his trailer, and tied them by the road. In abandoning them, he gave them a place at the horse rescue, where they could be adopted out instead of slaughtered.

What a horrible choice to have to make.

Laws do need to be changed so that slaughter isn't the only solution for poverty-stricken owners. But at the same time, we need to examine the factors that make slaughterhouses (seem) needed. Breed organizations and the industries that drive breeding (and backyard breeders) need to take a hard, cold look at the numbers – and realize that every new foal sentences another animal to death.

Doesn't happen. Euthanizing an animal with drugs is the most humane way to kill an animal and there is no way that is going to happen because it would cost too much money.

If you could choose how to die, would you choose to have your throat slit? Being shot in the head with a bolt? Waiting in line with other people, hearing them scream, smelling their urine and feces and blood? Beaten badly before you get in line because you don't want to be there and resist? Hoisted up by one leg, chain wrapped around your ankle to bleed to death? Maybe you are unconscious when they start to disembowel you, but probably not. Dipped into a tank of electrified water? Boiled to death? Skinned alive? Grilled alive? Suffocated? Beaten to death? Restrained while your brains are eaten from your head while you are still alive?

This is how animals are slaughtered. All this talk about regulations and humane slaughter is simply your way of separating yourself from the guilt of eating animals and what is done to them in your name. Any animal going into a slaughterhouse in this country experiences fear, pain, cruelty, and torture. You saying "no they don't" doesn't make it so.

....people.

The idea that if you FEEL a certain way, you may then FORCE others to FEEL the way you believe that they should FEEL is the crux of the issue. Emotional responses, such as man's dependence upon the horse in the past, or that we don't eat dog (it is quite tasty), simply lack intellectual rigor. Reduce the arguments given against the slaughter of horses, and it comes down to: "I don't like it". As the proud owner of twenty five magnificent Thoroughbreds, all of whom have great lives, my money is behind my beliefs.

My Chesapeake Bay Retriever couldn't agree more. Eat more cat, she says.

That is the depth of reasoning portrayed by the anti-slaughter crowd. Livestock belong to the owner, and no one else has a right to dictate the outcome of the owner's choice. Antislaughter legislation has not stopped the euthanisation of millions of dogs and cats, nor will it effect the goal of stopping horse slaughter. Such practices have, and will, simply move elsewhere.

from our leadership's inability to provide workable, solid nationwide contraception policies.

I love horses and I rode a lot when I was a kid. But I also see the bigger picture here. To me, its a recurring theme lately. The freedom as an American 'animal owner' to horse, puppy and kitten mill the market to saturation (the sale itself is king) vs. regulation in support of actual market demand with the hopeful result of higher demand and better quality animals.

Is this not just like 'the market' taking advantage of the freedom to sell any type of mortgage to anyone outside the rule of Regulation?

To my rightie friends who abhor the R(egulation) word:

'The market'-on any commodity, anywhere it can, folks-WILL and DOES take advantage of the paying public and the commodity itself in this case. Common sense regulation is not the boogie-man. Stop watching Faux News. In nearly every case, it can be the only obstacle available in stopping the inhumanity and cruelty-to animal or human-the market has proven time and again it is capable of exacting.

It is probably true that most animals are slaughtered in the ways you describe but by no means all. You saying it doesn't make it true, and you just show your lack of knowledge when you say. I eat meat. The beef I buy is all grass and forage fed, is slaughtered at 4 years instead of 18 months, gets no grain, gets no drugs and and is killed by lethal injection. I pay a significant premium for this beef, but I have visited the ranch and have seen the entire operation including the killing. Same with pork and chicken. You really don't know what you are talking about.