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Congress moves to restore ban on horse slaughter

by ShannaQuintero Posted on January 17, 2014

Congress moves to restore ban on horse slaughter

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Hear that whinnying? It’s not the sound of horses being led to slaughter. It’s the sound of would-be horse killers reacting to budget cuts.

In 2006, Congress cut funding for inspectors of horse slaughterhouses, which shut down the industry one year later. Funding was restored in 2011, and New Mexico company Valley Meat Co. planned to start slaughtering horses again, intending to export the meat to countries where people might actually want to eat it. But legal challenges and sabotage have stymied Valley Meat. It didn’t help when one of the company’s workers videotaped himself shooting a colt in the head and saying “fuck you” to animal activists — and then asininely posted the footage online. Last month, New Mexico sued in an effort to block the slaughterhouse, which Attorney General Gary King (D) described as “completely at odds with our traditions and our values as New Mexicans.”

And now Congress is once again getting in the way of Valley Meat’s plans, AP reports:

Congress’ latest budget bill tries to block the resumption of horse slaughter in the U.S. by cutting funding for inspections of the process.

The prohibition on spending by the Department of Agriculture is included in the $1.1 trillion budget bill that Congress sent to President Obama on Thursday.

Animal protection groups applauded the vote.

Would-be horse slaughterers hope an international trade agreement will help them:

Despite the growing government action to keep horse slaughter from resuming, an attorney for Valley and Rains Natural Meats of Gallatin, Mo., said Thursday his group will continue to fight to produce horse meat.

Blair Dunn said the companies would be looking at filing a claim that the funding ban violates provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Because why wouldn’t an international free trade agreement protect somebody’s right to slaughter a horse?


Source
Congress Cuts Funding for Horse Slaughter, The Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Congress moves to restore ban on horse slaughter

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GOP Senate Candidate Complained of Lack of Muslim Movie Villains

by FrankieN17 Posted on January 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Political correctness is keeping Hollywood from properly stigmatizing Muslims—so said Mississippi Republican Senate candidate Chris McDaniel. He issued this complaint during a 2006 episode of Right Side Radio, a syndicated show McDaniel hosted for three years before being elected to the state Senate in 2007.

“It’s funny how the movies have portrayed themselves lately and how the video games have portrayed themselves lately,” McDaniel said in the segment. “There’s one person that cannot be a villain in Hollywood, ever. One group that cannot be villains. Who is that? Cohost: The Muslims. Yeah, isn’t that neat? They’ll go out of their way to find some Russian white guy that’s just nuts, and he’s the terrorist, which I’ve never seen that. But the Muslims, they’ve just disappeared from Hollywood’s radar.”

“I think the true enemy is Ron Howard and Andy Griffith,” he joked. (The remarks were first reported by a local politics blog, Dark Horse Mississippi.)

McDaniel didn’t have it quite right. Islamic extremists played the roles of terrorists in seasons two, four, and five of the television show 24; the Showtime series Sleeper Cell; and a variety of movies, including Syriana, The Kingdom, Rules of Engagement, The Siege, True Lies, and Zero Dark Thirty. The Muslim-as-villain has been such a long-standing stereotype that a 1998 New York Times story reported on the difficulties Arab American actors faced in obtaining roles beyond that as hijackers.

Other audio clips unearthed by Dark Horse Mississippi feature McDaniel warning about the dangers of the “homosexual agenda” and describing a grand plan by Democrats to make “homosexual marriage and polygamy completely legal in all 50 states.” Speaking before the 2006 election, McDaniel rattled off a “parade of horribles” that would come to pass if Democrats (“the party of sex on demand”) took control of Congress; these included “new social taxes, new social programs,” and “new hate crime laws for homosexuals.”

In another episode of his radio show, McDaniel mocked San Francisco lawmakers who had decried an ad campaign depicting a white woman wrestling a black woman, under the slogan “White is coming.”

“They’re elite,” he said of the city’s residents, before taking a shot at the city’s LGBT community. “Right next to gender misidentification is IQ, I suppose. That’s gonna get me in trouble.”

Last week, Mother Jones reported on a promotional clip from Right Side Radio in which McDaniel blamed rising gun violence on hip-hop. As he put it, “It’s a problem of a culture that values prison more than college; a culture that values rap and destruction of community values more than it does poetry; a culture that can’t stand education.”

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GOP Senate Candidate Complained of Lack of Muslim Movie Villains

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Meat company sues USDA to speed up horse meat sales

by johnsmithwindows Posted on December 27, 2012

Meat company sues USDA to speed up horse meat sales

By Susie Cagle

A lot of people are pretty upset about the fact that we are still without a new farm bill. But no one is upset in quite the same way as this New Mexico man who is suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Humane Society of the United States, and other people who are standing in the way of him slaughtering and selling horses.

A provision passed last year might’ve effectively made horse slaughter legal for the first time in five years, but it turns out the feds are not exactly chomping at the bit to get back to inspecting those slaughterhouses. There’s no telling whether a new farm bill would restore a ban on the practice by defunding the USDA inspections. (The House has recommended that, but the Senate hasn’t.)

Rick de los Santos and his Valley Meat Company want to force the USDA to allow the country’s first horse meat operation since 2007. But it’s hard out there for a guy who wants to profit off of horse meat. The Los Angeles Times reports:

After waiting a year for permits, De los Santos, 52, says he’s using the courts to force the U.S. Department of Agriculture to resume inspections necessary to open what would be the nation’s first new horse slaughterhouse since 2007.

“I’ve submitted all the paperwork and have been told all along ‘Oh, it won’t be long now,’” said De los Santos, who owns Valley Meat Co. “I followed all their guidelines. I put more than $100,000 in upgrades and additions on my facilities to handle equine slaughter. And then the government comes back and tells me, ‘We can’t give you the permits. This horse issue has turned into a political game.’

“So what else do you do? I figured it was time to go to court.”

Another idea for something to do: not open a horse slaughterhouse?

The U.S. has been without them since the feds defunded USDA inspection of horse meat facilities in 2006. The last three slaughterhouses paid their own million-dollar inspection bills until closing.

Horses aren’t any more or less sustainable than the other hoofed animals we raise for meat, though we inexplicably love them more. De los Santos makes solid arguments for humane slaughter stateside as opposed to the current system of shipping animals to dirtier deaths in other countries, where horse meat is socially acceptable. (This argument being a slippery slope toward dog burgers, cat stews, and A Modest Proposal.)

The USDA has until January to respond to the suit, and we have until any day now to stop eating so dang many hoofed animals of any kind.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Meat company sues USDA to speed up horse meat sales

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