Horse Flesh

At least 30 mustangs have ended up as slabs of flesh since a new federal law last year began requiring the Bureau of Land Management to collect wild horses older than 11 years and sell them. Responding to public outrage, the BLM created a contract that is supposed to prohibit buyers from sending the horses to slaughter, at least directly. But mustangs can be difficult to train, says Jill Starr, president of Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue. "There aren't places for these horses to go."

Haggerty, a registered nurse, has spent much of her own time and money rescuing horses that are by-products of the pharmaceuticals industry. The drug Premarin, used to treat the symptoms of menopause, is produced from the urine of impregnated mares. In 2002, when the drug was found by the National Institutes of Health to cause increased risk of heart disease, breast cancer and other ailments, many stables sold off their stocks of Premarin mares. Overwhelmed rescue groups couldn't keep them from slaughter. Yet Haggerty thinks the market for the horses has since evolved. "Once the word got out that they can jump and they're nice riding horses," she says, "then people decided to bite the bullet and rescue them."

Racehorse rescue efforts also have seen modest improvements. Spurred by outrage that Ferdinand, winner of the 1986 Kentucky Derby, was most likely slaughtered in Japan in 2002, the New York Racing Association last year created the Ferdinand Fee, an optional donation program to help keep old racehorses alive. Nonetheless, rescue groups estimate that up to 6,000 racehorses in the United States are slaughtered each year; they're too hot-tempered or decrepit to become pleasure horses. "Racing takes its toll on them," says Diana Pikulski, executive director of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation. She's trying to make the Ferdinand Fee mandatory.

Overall, expanded horse rescue efforts are one reason the number of horses slaughtered in the United States has fallen sharply since 1990, when more than 300,000 were killed.

Even so, slaughter menaces some horses that are well trained and even well loved by their owners. In 2004, Cimaron, a young Morab gelding owned by 13-year-old Sky Dutchner of upstate New York, was stolen. Months of searching by the watchdog group Stolen Horse International found the animal had been shipped north along the so-called torture trail to Quebec and slaughtered. Debbie Metcalf, the group's founder, estimates that 40,000 horses are stolen in the United States annually. "The thieves are looking for somebody to fence them to pretty fast," she says. Slaughterhouses can be ready buyers, but they're required by law to check horses against a list of steeds that have been reported stolen. Branding a horse and implanting it with a small tracking microchip drastically improves the chances of recovering it. "It will be awfully hard to remove a microchip," Metcalf says. "The average thief is not going to do that."

Many slaughter foes fear that kill buyers are outbidding other potential purchasers, making horses worth more in sausages than under saddles. But Haggerty, though anti-slaughter, has attended numerous auctions in Texas and has never seen a pleasure horse buyer outbid. In fact, the costs of caring for an equine -- at least $3,000 a year -- quickly outstrip the purchase price. "If you can't afford to pay $1,000 for a good riding horse, minimum," Ewing says, "then you cannot afford to keep that horse."

Still, the path an unwanted horse takes to slaughter is often poorly understood by its original owners. Texas law requires notices at auctions to inform sellers that their horses could be bought for meat. No such sign was visible at the Magnolia auction; owner Don Edwards says no kill buyers work there. He says Santa Claus is a cattle trader. Yet many livestock traders resell horses to kill buyers if no other takers bite. The ambiguity of such wheeling and dealing suits many horse owners, who might suspect yet don't want to know that selling their kid's old pony is leaving blood on their hands.

Finch encourages horse owners who can't find homes for their animals to simply put them down. "It is very difficult to turn somebody away," he says, "but I always try to tell people that euthanasia is the best option. Don't send them to slaughter."

From the horse's point of view, however, being sold at the block is certainly better than being "humanely" killed. Even the most tattered Black Beauty dumped at auction has a small chance of finding a loving owner. The slaughterhouses in some ways help keep hope alive for these down-and-out steeds. Knowing the animals can always be sold at a profit for meat enables horse traders to buy them and first shop around elsewhere for higher bidders. As an alternative, euthanasia leaves no room for luck, except in the afterlife.