Though thousands of constituents have appealed to you before, we now urgently call for your support. Please advocate swift passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 503/S. 311) to ban horse export and slaughter for the purpose of human consumption.
Recent court rulings pronounced horse slaughter illegal in Texas and Illinois. With no legitimate equine processors left in the U.S., about 30,000 American horses were exported to Mexican and Canadian slaughterhouses this year.
At the Ciudad Juarez plant, the Houston Chronicle reports, horses are restrained in kill boxes so workers can pierce their backs with a small knife "seven, eight, nine times." Fully alert, horses bob their heads as the blade stabs them around the withers. By the 10th puncture, one horse collapses in pools of her own blood. She is paralyzed, but not dead. After two more minutes, workers dangle her by a shackled rear leg and slit her throat. Some horses remain conscious as their bodies are dismembered.
American voters overwhelmingly oppose the export and brutal treatment of our horses. Yet there is a 370 percent increase in the number of U.S. horses transported over our borders this year. By the time many American horses reach slaughter plants in both Canada and Mexico, they've traveled 700 or more miles stuffed inside double-deck livestock trucks or other vehicles built for smaller animals. Deprived of food, water and rest, most arrive weak, dehydrated, and injured. Some are dead by journey's end.
Last year, tens of thousands of American horses died for diners in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, and Russia. While fewer American horses have been killed since the closure of U.S. operations, those shipped to Mexico and Canada die even more violently than those in U.S. slaughterhouses. State-by-state bans are largely meaningless until a federal ban ends the export of American horses for human ingestion.
If you do not co-sponsor H.R. 503/S. 311, I urge you to do so. Please help expedite passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act and move this bill out of committee for a vote. The longer Congress wavers, the more American horses face agony inside foreign equine plants.
Please let me know your stance on this vital, but stalled legislation. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you,
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