Last week, congress lifted a 5-year-old ban on funding the inspection of horse meat processed in American slaughterhouses, a ban which had previously rendered the processing and human consumption of horse meat effectively illegal within U.S. borders.

The USDA will have to raise funds for industry oversight before any horse meat ends up on American shelves, but they may be aided by private investors who expect to profit in the long term. This uncertain shift in policy has the potential to attract the interest of a wide variety of American industries from race-tracks to public zoos. The thought of horses being killed for food has resulted in an immediate public backlash but the complicated intersection of horse breeding and the American food industry raises a series of concerns which no single piece of legislation could resolve.
Much of the impetus for lifting the ban on processing horse meat came from public concern over the ongoing exportation of live horses for slaughter in Mexico and Canada, along with the increasing neglect of aging horses since the beginning of the recession in 2008. Reporters and industry representatives claim that the conditions of international slaughterhouses are below American standards and that shipping off live animals over hundreds of miles causes extreme stress and frequent injury.

Horse breeders facing rising costs of export may be less discerning in location to which they send their aging horses or may be forced to even shut down small farms entirely. The dangers of shipping live animals are exacerbated by the common practice of putting horses into trucks and pens built for cows, the latter of which are still the heart of the large-animal meat industry. Due to their different physiology, horses are likely to remain conscious from a blow to the head which would ordinarily kill a cow, a circumstance that has been reported in several cases – a matter of which I would strongly caution anyone from searching via YouTube.

It remains to be seen whether the USDA will develop safer and more humane methods for horse slaughter, particularly given their strained budget and the pressure they face to initiate processing as soon as possible. Farmers and consumers are also concerned that contemporary horses are raised in fundamentally different conditions than other livestock, conditions which make their meat substantially more dangerous.

Horse trainer Katie J. Magee of Grafton, recently warned the Worcester Telegram of the dangers of horse meat, saying “Most any medication you put on even the smallest wound shouldn’t be used on an animal for human consumption… They are raised as pets, and we’re looking at poisoning people.” Many of the horses not being raised “as pets” face even more hazardous conditions. American horse racing is a multi-billion dollar industry (global profits on betting alone amounted to $115 billion in 2008) and horses are typically given not only high levels of antibiotics but a regular diet of steroids to remain profitable on the track and out to stud.

Horse racers stand to increase their profits if they can get a greater return on the horses that never make it to the tracks or are worn down by the constant racing, transport, and breeding. Finally, it remains to be seen whether a legally sanctioned horse meat industry will only process horses facing neglect. If there is a sufficient international demand for horse meat, young and healthy horses may be bred for their meat as any other livestock in the U.S. The slaughterhouse industry has been widely criticized for exploitative and deadly working conditions and popular books on the American meat industry such as “Fast Food Nation” and “Eating Animals” have portrayed an industry that few readers would be eager to expand.

Finally, there is the question of who will actually be eating these horses and what awareness they will have of the antibiotics and hormones included in their meal. Most articles on the new legislation have presumed that the meat will be voluntarily consumed either domestically or abroad. However, if horse meat enters the stream of American meat production, it may well end up in heavily processed, mixed meat products. Even now, the effective ban on human consumption of horse meat does not mean that no horse meat is sold in the U.S.

The New York Times has noted that American zoos already purchase substantial amounts of horse meat to feed their carnivorous animals. Having to purchase imported meat has distanced zoos from their meat sources and raised their prices of operation. If zoos are to advocate for preserving fragile ecosystems, it is counter-productive to manufacture a food-chain for animals in captivity which is itself unsustainable.

The legalization of horse slaughter in the U.S. would not only change the lives of American horses, but would have rippling effects for farmers, slaughterhouse employees here and abroad, and consumers of horse meat world-wide. The issue of eating horses raises questions about the adequacy of regulation in the American meat industry and the legitimacy of practices and profits for horse breeders, racers, and slaughterhouses.

To the surprise of many journalists, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has provisionally supported lifting the ban in order to replace it with more meaningful legislation that would ban both slaughtering horses domestically and shipping them abroad. At the same time, PETA seeks to petition horse-racing clubs to commit to retirement packages for their racing horses, demanding that the industry maintain its own aging horses rather than dumping them into the American food supply.

PETA’s perspective is more cohesive than many others, but it still may not account for small farms which breed horses for work and riding, and are finding it harder every year to affordably and legally euthanize their animals. I do not have an easy answer to these dilemmas – I believe that being for or against the inspection of horse slaughter in the U.S is not enough as this issue is inextricable in regards to global economic relations and ethical questions about the kind of society we want to live in.

Michael O’Connor is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].