September 7, 2011 – Chicago (EWA) – The long awaited Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on horse welfare fell far short of the respectable reporting we have come to expect from the GAO, even raising questions as to the agency’s credibility.

The Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) and Animal Law Coalition (ALC) have issued an exhaustive analysis and executive summary, demonstrating the embarrassing and shocking lack of evidence for GAO’s findings.

The analysis concludes that the GAO report is “disturbing” as it is filled with speculation, anecdotes, hearsay and unsupported opinions. The GAO sources appear to be largely known slaughter proponents.

“The GAO’s pro-slaughter bias is clearly evident in the report’s defamatory accusation that the Cavel fire in 2002 was started by so-called anti-slaughter arsonists,” states co-author and EWA vice president, Vicki Tobin. The cause of the fire was never determined and it was Cavel’s owners who benefitted from the fire, claiming $5M when the damages were estimated at $2M.

The EWA/ALC analysis details how, instead of doing the hard work of gathering actual data, the GAO relied on chitchats with a handful of state veterinarians with a few livestock board and other state officials and on information provided by pro-slaughter organizations.

“The GAO’s economic models fail to credibly take into account basic principles of supply and demand, the extremely limited effect of slaughter on the horse industry and the devastating effects of one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression,” said ALC’s Laura Allen. “Instead, the GAO report blamed the closing of 3 U.S. horse slaughter plants in 2007 for a decline in live horse prices, loss of horse markets, and a rise in horses in need.”

Carolyn Betts, Ph.D. Economics, explains, “There is, by definition, no correlation between something that stays roughly constant over time – the number of horses slaughtered – and something that the GAO claims has gone up significantly over the same time period – the number of horses abandoned and neglected. In the absence of an observable correlation, it is nothing short of ‘heroic’ for the GAO to assume a causal relation from a proximate constant to a variable that it argues has increased.”

A FOIA request for the data and methods the GAO used in developing its economic models was denied by the Congressional Committee that requested the GAO report. The EWA/ALC analysis concludes that this is nothing short of a Congressional cover-up for the GAO’s unsubstantiated claims.

A study by John Holland, co-founder and president of EWA, which was provided to GAO, found that cases of horse abuse and neglect in Illinois rose and fell with the unemployment rate. The same study found absolutely no mathematical correlation between these cases and the rate of slaughter.

The EWA contends that slaughter actually contributes to the problem of too many horses by enabling over-breeding and driving down prices. GAO’s economic model, done correctly, would have shown that prohibiting export of horses for slaughter would be the one thing that would really improve horse welfare over the long term.

The analysis also points out that the GAO report completely glossed over critical food safety issues raised by the slaughter of American horses for human consumption. The GAO was indifferent to the export of U.S. horses for slaughter for human consumption despite the fact that these horses contain drugs, such as phenylbutazone, which the FDA bans for use in animals used for food. Vicki Tobin explains, “U.S. horses are not raised or regulated as food animals. Given the importance of food safety, horse slaughter for human consumption should not even be a discussion point in a government report, let alone a recommendation.”

Probably one of the more ridiculous recommendations by the GAO is that USDA/APHIS will do better in enforcing humane transport regulations if there is slaughter available in the U.S. But historically, USDA/APHIS has always done an abysmal job of enforcing these regulations. Long before the 2007 closings, horses were exported for slaughter in large numbers and suffered on long, arduous trips over the borders and within the U.S.

In fact, the GAO’s discussion of APHIS’ shocking ineptitude and indifference to horses and the horrific mistreatment they endure throughout the slaughter pipeline is reason enough for Congress to ban horse slaughter and to do it now.

The GAO report and the EWA/ALC report will be discussed at the upcoming International Equine Conference, Sept. 26-28. Visit http://www.equinewelfarealliance.org/Int_l_Equine_Conference.html for additional information and to register.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues-free 501(c)(4) umbrella organization representing 189 organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

The Animal Law Coalition is a coalition of pet owners and rescuers, advocates, attorneys, law students, veterinarians, shelter workers, decision makers, and other citizens, that advocates for the rights of animals to live and live free of cruelty and neglect. www.animallawcoalition.com

Contacts:

Vicki Tobin, Equine Welfare Alliance
630.961.9292
vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

Laura Allen, Animal Law Coalition and Equine Welfare Alliance, general counsel
425.419.7301
lauraallen@animallawcoalition.com

Chicago (EWA) – A coalition of animal welfare groups including the Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) and the Animal Law Coalition has announced the first International Equine Conference (IEC) to be held September 26-28 at the Marriott Residence Inn, Old Town Alexandria, Va.

The three day event will feature renowned experts on the welfare and preservation of both domestic and wild equines, legislators and medical experts. Presentations will address many aspects of the field ranging from horse slaughter to wild equine preservation and will include related human and animal health concerns.

“Few subjects have been clouded by so much misinformation as these,” says John Holland of the Equine Welfare Alliance. “We intend to provide a forum where attendees can get a documented, factual understanding of these complex issues.”

Among the many distinguished speakers will be Madeleine Pickens of Saving America’s Mustangs, Senator Mary Landrieu, Congressman Jim Moran, State Senator Dave Wanzenried, Paula Bacon the former mayor of Kaufman, TX, Ann Marini, Ph.D., M.D., Ginger Kathrens of The Cloud Foundation, Michael Blowen of Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Facility, Keith Dane with The Humane Society of the U.S., Lonita Stewart with Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, Katie Fite with Western Watersheds Project and authors Deanne Stillman and Alex Brown. A complete list of the presenters can be viewed at http://www.equinewelfarealliance.org/Int_l_Equine_Conference.html.

The conference will also feature two private film screenings for attendees. The sessions are split into horse slaughter, horse industry issues and protections for America’s wild horses and burros as well as in-depth discussions on fertility control.

“With the disinformation campaign being waged by horse slaughter proponents in full swing,” added EWA’s Vicki Tobin, “this is an opportune time to hear from the experts on the dangers to consumers of slaughtering animals that are not raised or regulated as food animals.”

Attendees will also hear a firsthand account of what it is like to live with a horse slaughter plant in your town from Mayor Bacon, and see the documented records of its outrageous pollution. Economics expert Caroline Betts, Ph.D., M.A., will “demystify” the recent GAO study and explain what it really established and what it did not.

The sponsors and supporters of the conference encourage the public as well as those in the horse industry, to attend and finally hear from the experts the information that separates fact from fiction.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues-free 501c4, umbrella organization with 189 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

The Animal Law Coalition is a coalition of pet owners and rescuers, advocates, attorneys, law students, veterinarians, shelter workers, decision makers, and other citizens, that advocates for the rights of animals to live and live free of cruelty and neglect. www.animallawcoalition.com

Contacts:

John Holland, Equine Welfare Alliance
540.268.5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Laura Allen, Animal Law Coalition and Equine Welfare Alliance, general counsel
425.419.7301
lauraallen@animallawcoalition.com

June 22, 2011 – Chicago (EWA) – In an effort to appear credible, the United Organizations of the Horse (UOH) has created what it calls communication tools to “to help the horse industry counter hysterical anti-slaughter claims with sound science and common sense.”

The simple marketing rule of “know your audience” has eluded UOH which offers it “tools” to the horse industry that overwhelming opposes horse slaughter. A recent poll on Popvox, a barometer for Congress to assess support on legislation, indicates 76% support the legislation (S 1176) to ban horse slaughter.

One of the most egregious of Wallis’ “communication tools” is the total disregard of FDA and European Union food safety regulations. Wallis has actually written her own regulations on Phenylbutazone (bute), a medication routinely given to U.S. horses that is banned in horses intended for food. She doesn’t think it’s a problem for people to eat horsemeat that contains a known carcinogenic and which can cause other deadly diseases.

The “science and common sense” has already been determined and it is up to Wallis to follow the law, not rewrite it.

Food safety laws aren’t “hysterical anti-slaughter claims”. Wallis’ refusal to follow food safety laws by creating her own rules should be a red flag to Congress about the misinformation offered to support horse slaughter.

UOH also provides several resource documents that are outdated and do not portray current data on drug residues found in U.S. horses sent to slaughter. A glaring omission is the current report from the European Union that documents drug residues found in horses even though the accompanying  paperwork, obviously falsified,  stated the horses were drug free [report Ref. Ares(2011)398056].

Wallis says the Humane Society of the United States has prevented her from opening a horse meat business. Wallis is referring to the defunding of horse inspections, without which commercial horse slaughter for human consumption is not legal in the U.S. The inspections have been defunded since 2006, and the House of Representatives voted earlier this month to continue the defunding.

Laws are not passed by a single organization but by the demands of constituents. This is what Americans want. U.S. horses are not raised or regulated as food animals and are not viewed as food animals except by those in the foreign horse meat business. Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) and Animal Law Coalition (ALC) applaud Congress for being fiscally responsible by not wasting taxpayer dollars to fund inspections of a non-food animal.

With slaughter supporters like Wallis openly admitting the food safety violations in the horse meat business, Congress must step up to take the lead on food safety by swiftly passing the legislation that will end the slaughter of U.S. horses.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with 172 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

The Animal Law Coalition is a coalition of pet owners and rescuers, advocates, attorneys, law students, veterinarians, shelter workers, decision makers, and other citizens, that advocates for the rights of animals to live and live free of cruelty and neglect. www.animallawcoalition.com

Contacts:

Vicki Tobin
630.961.9292
vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

Laura Allen, Animal Law Coalition and Equine Welfare Alliance, general counsel
425.419.7301
lauraallen@animallawcoalition.com

June 19, 2011 – Chicago (EWA) – A long overdue Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the effect of closing the US horse slaughter plants is scheduled for release on Wednesday, June 22. Although the report’s contents are to be kept confidential until released, slaughter supporters have been indicating for months that they were leaked the report and have now orchestrated an “Unwanted Horse” teleconference late in the day of the release, presumably to promote the report’s findings.

The teleconference, called “Ask a Vet” is being presented by The Horse, the magazine of the American Veterinary Medical Association, a long term supporter of horse slaughter, and features veterinarian Tom Lenz, the former Chair of the American Horse Council’s “Unwanted Horse Coalition (UHC)”. The UHC, supposedly founded to propose solutions to the excess horse problem, has instead concentrated on promoting the phrase “unwanted horse” to take the focus off of overproduction, which slaughter actually encourages, and imply slaughter horses are somehow unusable except as meat.

Pfizer Pharmaceuticals sponsoring a teleconference on solutions to the “unwanted horse” problem is beyond brazen. Pfizer owns Wythe Pharmaceuticals, the producer of a line of hormone replacement therapy drugs made from pregnant mare urine and is one of the largest producers of excess, poorly bred and untrained foals in North America.

Every year, Wythe contracts farms to breed tens of thousands of mares so that their urine can be collected to make the drugs. Not only does this process create thousands of excess foals, the drug was found to have devastating health effects on women during a 2002 study <http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov2002/nhlbi-19.htm> by the National Institutes of Health. The company responded by diluting the drug and renaming it.

Viewed as a tactic to stall legislation to ban horse slaughter, the report was requested by Congressional Senate members opposing a ban in the 111th Congress (2009-2010). Slaughter opponents point out that the closings did not reduce the number of American horses being slaughtered, and therefore could not have affected the horse industry. USDA statistics show the same numbers of horses being bought for slaughter at US auctions now as before the closings, with the only difference being where they are slaughtered.

It was a rude surprise when horse slaughter lobbyist Charles Stenholm spoke at a January conference to promote horse slaughter and strongly hinted that the report would be good for their position. This was followed in a letter sent to all members of Congress by slaughter promoter, Sue Wallis, in which she begged members to delay any votes until the GAO report was released.

When Steve Long, editor of Horseback Magazine <http://www.horsebackmagazine.com>, inquired to the GAO about the leak, he was told they were aware the report had leaked, but that he could not see it until June 22nd. This was almost immediately followed by a denial of the leak from a higher official.

Long told EWA, “It was astonishing that the top press flak at GAO was so unsophisticated he denied his own spokesperson confirmed there was a leak. Generally Washington spokesmen are much more savvy than that and know many reporters tape interviews.”

Executives of the EWA and Animal Law Coalition provided information to the GAO lead investigator Terry Horner, but when rumors of the leaks emerged, EWA’s John Holland found Horner had effectively disappeared. “Email to Mr. Horner went unanswered, and when I tried to call his office I was given a message that he would be unavailable until June. In June calls resulted in a message that the number was unassigned even though it was still in the directory”, said Holland.

The GAO has maintained a reputation for independence and fairness, making the leaking of the report and the implied bias of those who prepared it a potential scandal.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with 172 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

Contacts:

John Holland
540-268-5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Vicki Tobin
630.961.9292
vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

Chicago (EWA) – United Horsemen (UH), a 501c3 non-profit organization that promotes horse slaughter, has launched an advertizing and editorializing campaign that defies credulity. The campaign is an obvious attempt to derail the Rep. Moran (VA) amendment to the agriculture budget that continues a policy of defunding horse meat inspections.

Horseback Magazine <http://horsebackmagazine.com/hb/archives/9390/comment-page-1> has recently run a series of these self-contradictory articles from the group that has stunned readers. The most glaring inaccuracies are those on food safety. U.S. horses have no production records since they are not raised or regulated as food animals and often contain prohibited substances.

The spin started by calling horse slaughter opponents “anti-horse” and then by firing off euphemisms like “horse processing” and slogans like “taking back the reins of the horse industry”, it pirouettes into a frenzy of reality bending distortion not seen since Alice ventured down the famous rabbit hole. In many cases, a paragraph directly contradicts the preceding one.

The articles claim that slaughter opponents have misrepresented a recent European Union (EU) report on drug residues in horses. It then sites the wrong report as proof. The sited report was for drug residues found in European raised horses under their strict micro-chip based “passport” system for tracking medications.

Most inexplicably, text pasted from the report into the ads clearly states that the report does not cover horses from the US, Canada or Mexico!

When challenged about citing the wrong report, spokeswoman Sue Wallis provided four new links, two of which had nothing to do with horses, one that linked to a dead site, and a forth that actually linked to an earlier report on Mexican slaughter showing that there were indeed drug residues found in horses!

The most recent report from the EU [Ref. Ares (2011)398056] that triggered the frenzy, documented that residues of banned substances were in fact found in U.S. horses slaughtered in Mexico.

As if these articles were not bizarre enough, a stunning admission in the EU report itself states that the Mexican testers did not record the total number of equines tested, thus making analysis of the results impossible!

Worse, all contaminated horses were accompanied by sworn affidavits stating the horses were drug free. The EU plants in Canada and Mexico are considering a ban on U.S. horses because of food safety issues.

Ignoring history, the group goes on to claim that there would be no cost to restoring inspections because the USDA could initiate a “pay for inspections program”. This statement ignores the fact that the very idea was implemented by the USDA in 2007 and found by the courts to be in violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

The group effectively advocates scrapping the whole system of government inspections dating back to reforms made after the incredible corruption of paid inspections was first exposed in the 1906 Upton Sinclair novel “The Jungle”.

The articles also restate the group’s support of the meat industry by calling for the removal and slaughter of wild horses. While citing the $70M spent on America’s wild horses, there is never a mention of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that are used to subsidize the welfare ranchers grazing privately owned livestock on public lands.

The slaughter infrastructure is one of a few businesses that have not suffered from the recession. In 2010, over 109,000 US horses were slaughtered in Mexico and Canada. The total revenues from horse slaughter average only three cents on every one hundred dollars generated by the horse industry.

Returning domestic horse slaughter will not fix the economy nor will it control the horse population. Horse slaughter only encourages excessive breeding.

A communication released yesterday announced yet another bizarre gimmick to gain support for slaughtering horses. With the recent emphasis on food safety and documented proof that U.S. horse meat is not safe, the group is proposing slaughtering horses to feed the hungry children of the world. Apparently, the hungry should not be afforded the right to consume safe food.

EWA implores Congress and Americans not to fall for this group’s deceptive agenda of untruths and to support and swiftly pass the legislation to end the slaughter of U.S. horses.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with 172 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

Contacts:

John Holland
540-268-5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Vicki Tobin
630.961.9292
vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

Chicago (EWA) – The Equine Welfare Alliance and Animal Law Coalition applaud Rep. Jim Moran and House of Representatives Appropriations Committee members who stood up for the horses this week. Rep. Moran introduced an amendment to the proposed agriculture appropriations bill to make sure commercial horse slaughter in the U.S. remains illegal.

The amendment was accepted by the Committee on a vote of 24 to 21 and it’s now on to a vote by the full House on the agriculture appropriations bill on June 15.

The amendment de-funds (prohibits funds from being spent on) ante-mortem inspections of horses to be slaughtered for human consumption. Without these inspections required by federal law, horses cannot be commercially slaughtered for human consumption in the U.S. The inspections have been de-funded since 2006. http://www.animallawcoalition.com/horse-slaughter/article/1809

The next step must be a ban on exports of U.S. horses for slaughter for human consumption. More than two thirds of Americans support a ban on horse slaughter. Proponents have avoided discussing what is clear to most Americans – the inherent cruelty of horse slaughter. As Dr. Lester Friedlander, DVM & former Chief USDA Inspector, told Congress in 2008, “The captive bolt is not a proper instrument for the slaughter of equids, these animals regain consciousness 30 seconds after being struck, they are fully aware they are being vivisected.”

There is virtually no market in the U.S. for horsemeat and U.S. horses are not raised under the regulations required for food animals. Indeed, horses are given a wide variety of drugs that are not tracked. Phenylbutazone (bute), for example, is given to horses like aspirin. Bute is a known carcinogen and causes liver failure, aplastic anemia and other blood diseases. It is banned by the FDA for use in food animals. Yet, we continue to allow horses full of drugs to be sent for slaughter for consumption as a pricey delicacy by people in other countries.

Slaughter is also not a “service” for so-called excess or “unwanted”, abandoned, neglected or infirm horses. If it were, we would have no horses in need because slaughter is still available for American horses in other countries. But a study for USDA confirms more than 92% of horses sent for slaughter are healthy. Kill buyers want the healthiest horses, not old, sick or infirm horses. Slaughter is driven by a demand for horsemeat in other countries.

Slaughter proponents claim that horse slaughter is necessary because there are too many horses, but the irony is that the availability of slaughter creates a “salvage market” that encourages excess breeding and poor breeding practices. In a market where supply is so easily increased, it will simply follow demand.

Among other observations, Rep. Moran made the point that the $5 million dollars of funding in question would merely prop up a foreign owned industry at US taxpayer expense. In the current fiscal environment, this argument resonated across party lines.

Slaughter represents less than 3 cents for every $100 of revenue in the horse industry. It has nothing to do with the health of the horse industry. All slaughter has ever brought to U.S. communities besides animal cruelty is environmental and economic devastation. The jobs are few and very poor; the profits along with the “product” are shipped off to foreign owners of slaughter facilities. As Paula Bacon, mayor of Kaufman, Texas when a horse slaughter facility operated there, said, “Our community did not benefit. We paid”.

It is time Americans and their horses stopped paying the awful price of horse slaughter. Call on your U.S. representative to retain the de-funding of horse inspections in the Agriculture Appropriations bill.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with 155 member organizations and hundreds of individuals worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

The Animal Law Coalition is a coalition of pet owners and rescuers, advocates, attorneys, law students, veterinarians, shelter workers, decision makers, and other citizens, that advocates for the rights of animals to live and live free of cruelty and neglect. www.animallawcoalition.com

John Holland, Equine Welfare Alliance
540.268.5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Laura Allen, Animal Law Coalition and Equine Welfare Alliance, general counsel
425.419.7301
lauraallen@animallawcoalition.com

Chicago (EWA) – Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA) joins its Canadian partner, Canadian Horse Defence Coalition (CHDC), in calling for the withdrawal of an episode scheduled to air Monday, May 16 on the Food Network’s program Top Chef Canada.

The program features “French Cuisine” including horse meat and foie gras, angering both horse advocates and animal welfare groups across the globe. The timing of this episode coincides with CHDC’s May Equine Awareness campaign.

In choosing these menu items, the program has completely ignored the cruelty involved in their production. Foie gras is diseased duck liver produced by force feeding ducks using a feeding tube thrust down their throats several times a day until they are too fat to even stand up. The liver becomes hugely swollen in an attempt to deal with the process.

Horse meat in Canada comes from horses that often suffer incredible abuse even before they arrive at slaughter. Beyond this, horse meat is likely to contain drugs that are illegal in food animals.

Last year, renowned chef at Pangaea Restaurant in Toronto, Martin Kouprie, removed horse meat from the menu because slaughterhouses cannot tell him where the horses come from and whether the meat is free of toxic substances. “I cannot in good conscience serve that to my customers,” said Kouprie. “Every ingredient in my kitchen has a story, and if I don’t know that story, I cannot serve it.”

The investigations into two of the major horse slaughter plants in Canada last year revealed horrific conditions and has caused outrage across the world. A recent European Union Food and Veterinary Office investigation into the horse slaughter plants in Mexico revealed numerous serious violations including drug residues in the meat.

North American horses are not raised or regulated as food animals. “Consumers need to be aware of the health dangers of eating horse meat and the cruelty the horses endure before ending up on their plates,” commented John Holland, president of EWA.

“Many Canadians consider horses to be as dear to their hearts as dogs and cats,” adds Sinikka Crosland, Executive Director of the Canadian Horse Defence Coalition. “Companion animals are not likely to be well-accepted as menu items in our country.”

The Equine Welfare Alliance believes that the choice of horse meat was not an accidental social misjudgment, but more likely the result of influence from a well funded public relations effort on the part of horse slaughter supporters aimed at gaining acceptance for the meat and desensitizing viewers to horse slaughter in general. Case in point, The Toronto Observer also ran a story on May 11 defending the consumption of horsemeat.

It is in the best interest of the Food Network and consumers to withdraw the episode promoting food that is dangerous to consumers and cruel to equines. Fortunately, the French have many excellent sauces and dishes to choose from that do not involve cruelty and carcinogens as ingredients.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with over 150 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

The Canadian Horse Defence Coalition is a collective of people and national groups that have joined forces in order to help protect equines in Canada from slaughter and the export of live equines for slaughter, by raising public awareness through education, and helping to achieve the enactment of legislation that will ban these practices in Canada. www.defendhorsescanada.org

John Holland
Equine Welfare Alliance
540.268.5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Sinikka Crosland
Canadian Horse Defence Coalition
info@defendhorsescanada.org
250.768.4803

March 21, 2011 – Chicago (EWA) – United Horsemen (UH), a 501c3 non-profit organization that promotes horse slaughter, is taking its fight against the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to a new extreme. Not only does this group oppose every piece of legislation that benefits the welfare of horses but tries to garner support with bogus scare tactics.

The latest attack, made under the guise of a property rights issue, is against a proposed ban on “horse tripping” in Nevada. Horse tripping is a deadly and sadistic event which has found its way into the US from third world “Charro” rodeos and involves roping the legs of a running horse. The event commonly causes fatal injuries or permanent lameness to the animal.

“They are misleading the public with false information and trying to scare people into opposing the legislation. This is not an attack on rodeos or a first step to anything. It is a bill designed to end the cruel, dangerous treatment of horses as was the ban on horse soring,” stated Vicki Tobin of the Equine Welfare Alliance (EWA).

In its latest email to its supporters, UH provides a list of invalid talking points that are an insult to the public’s intelligence and a disservice to American rodeos. The group claims that the Charro Rodeo Association voluntary banned horse tripping in 1995 when in fact, they were forced to do so by a 1994 law, AB 49x – a law that was not spearheaded by the HSUS.

Similar claims of HSUS or PETA involvement are frequently made by this group on animal welfare issues when local organizations and equine advocates spearheaded the initiatives.

When Oregon tried to pass similar legislation earlier this year, the group claimed the law would weaken existing laws and although that is false, they are making the same claims for Nevada.

EWA calls on Nevada residents to support the legislation to ban horse tripping to ensure this cruel practice is never tolerated.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with over 145 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org

Contacts:

John Holland

540-268-5693

john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Vicki Tobin

630.961.9292

vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

December 1, 2010 – Chicago (EWA) – Event organizer Sue Wallis, a vocal proponent of sending America’s wild horses to slaughter, has announced that BLM Chief Bob Abbey is a confirmed speaker at her organization’s upcoming Summit of the Horse.

The event’s Master of Ceremonies, Trent Loos, has proposed solving the mustang issue by making America’s wild horse a big game animal and the published list of speakers is a virtual who’s who of horse slaughter proponents, including lobbyists, slaughter auctioneers, horse breeders, fake welfare front organizations and even a few convicts.

Abbey has come under criticism in the past year for a greatly accelerated program of removing wild horses and burros from public land. As the number of horses the BLM is holding increases and budgets tighten, a crisis is inevitable. In 2009 it was discovered that the BLM was considering sending mustangs to slaughter, igniting a firestorm of controversy. Abbey’s participation in this event will certainly add fuel to that fire.

Master of Ceremonies Loos is an agricultural talk show host who first gained fame for his management of a 50,000 pig factory farm on the land of the Rosebud Sioux. The Rosebud contended that the farm and its vast lagoons of pig manure had been foisted on them by politicians and successfully sued to evict Loos and his porcine pals in 2002.

Shortly after starting an organization called “Truth Keepers” to challenge “animal rights groups”, Loos was charged with and subsequently convicted of cattle fraud (selling cattle he didn’t own). Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his book Crimes against Nature, accused Trent Loos of stalking him while he was on a book tour, going so far as to follow him into a men’s room. When asked about the stalking charge during his radio program, Loos readily admitted it, saying he had to keep Kennedy honest.

When a slaughter ban was being considered in Illinois, Loos promised to bring a truck load of “unwanted horses” to the capitol steps. In the event, he showed up with a large supply of toy stick horses which he passed out to visiting school children. The bill passed despite this demonstration, eventually closing the last slaughter plant in the US.

Also included in the confirmed roster is ex-congressman and horse slaughter lobbyist Charlie Stenholm of the firm Olsson, Frank and Weeda. Before losing his seat and becoming a lobbyist, Stenholm was minority leader of Bob Goodlatte’s house agriculture committee. The two men jointly managed to bottle up HR 857, an early attempt to end horse slaughter, in their committee despite the bill’s overwhelming support.

Another scheduled participant is Dave Cattoor, by far the most controversial of the helicopter gather contractors employed by the BLM. Cattoor was convicted of illegally gathering wild horses in 1992. In the years since, Cattoor has won contracts for millions of dollars to run the BLM gathers. In just one gather on the Calico complex this year, over 100 wild horses died either during the operation or shortly afterward.

Bill desBarres of the Horse Welfare Alliance of Canada (HWAC) will be giving the “international perspective”. DesBarres is a stalwart defender of the Canadian abattoirs, even listing the Bouvry horse slaughter plant as a “resource partner”. When devastating undercover videos of the treatment of horses at the slaughter plants were released by the Canadian Horse Defense Coalition, desBarres claimed they had been faked even as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) was admitting they were authentic.

And these are but a few examples of the people who will be speaking. While the event claims to be open to ideas from all sides, it does not include anyone known to disagree with the pro-slaughter anti-mustang positions of its organizers, United Organizations of the Horse and United Horsemen.

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with over 125 member organizations. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org.

Contacts:

John Holland

540-268-5693

john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Vicki Tobin

630.961.9292

vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

November 30, 2010 – Chicago (EWA) – In a detailed article published in Horseback Magazine titled ”Numbers won’t work in proposed processing plant”, EWA president John Holland lays out the reasons that a much hyped horse slaughter plant proposed for Wyoming is in fact not going to become a reality any time soon.

The article begins by detailing some of the business misadventures of Sue Wallis, the plant’s chief promoter, and goes on to enumerate the many reasons such a plant would not be economically viable under present conditions.

In a statement about the article, Holland said, “It is amazing how people will believe anything they read in print, and how many publications will regurgitate blatantly unfounded pieces as if they were newsworthy stories.”

“It was déjà vu all over again,” pointed out Holland as he recounted when “Ed Butcher (then a Montana State Representative) issued a press releases about the horse slaughter plant he was about to bequeath to the town of Hardin, Montana with the help of unnamed Chinese investors. The press releases were picked up by major wire services who were subsequently embarrassed when EWA exposed the fact that Hardin had passed an ordinance (2010-01) specifically aimed at blocking such a plant.”

The Horseback article concludes: “So Wallis has no business credentials, no cost estimate, no business plan, no license, no investors, and no market. Other than that she is ready to start killing horses almost immediately.”

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues free, umbrella organization with over 125 member organizations. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org.

Contacts:

Vicki Tobin

630.961.9292

vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org

John Holland

540-268-5693

john@equinewelfarealliance.org