SP111
Posts: 93
Joined: 9/2/2006
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Hi Folks,
The situation has been very fluid in recent days and the great news about the federal court finding the USDA pay-for-inspections program illegal has been most welcome. The good news was tempered by the sad rejection of offers to buy the horses. But many of you have questions about just what this means and I am afraid there is a bit of over- expectation. What I am about to say is merely my best understanding at this moment and not necessarily absolute fact. (I am not a lawyer, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express once.)
In the summer of 2005 the Ensign-Byrd (Senate)/Spratt-Sweeney (House) amendment to the Agriculture budget passed both chambers. It removed funding for USDA inspectors at the horse slaughter plants. It was intended to stop horse slaughter immediately. But the budget went to conference committee to iron out the differences between the Senate and House versions. There were no differences in the House and Senate versions of the amendment, but Henry Bonilla (formerly R-TX), a close ally of then House agriculture committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, put a 120-day delay on its effective date.
The 2006 budget should have started on October 1, 2005, and run until September 31, 2006. The budget was, however, delayed until early December 2005. With these delays, the amendment should have gone into effect on March 10, 2006. Before this happened, the USDA announced that it had reached an agreement with the slaughter plants to allow them to pay for their own inspections.
This plan was clearly against the will of Congress, and possibly a violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, and it was not done with a required Environmental Impact Statement, but the USDA implemented it anyhow. Several animal groups including SAPL, DDAL and HSUS, sued the USDA and its director Mike Johanns. Some of the claims were almost immediately thrown out for lack of "standing." This means that the plaintiffs were not directly damaged by the USDA decision, and so had no dog in the fight. However, with members of those organizations living in the areas of the plants, they did have standing on issues like the fact that the USDA had not done an environmental impact study.
Like the Texas case, it then fell into the sound-proof world of the judiciary and was largely forgotten by most of us. And again like the Texas case, this decision suddenly brought it back to the forefront.
What does it do? Federal inspectors must be present in the slaughter plants if the meat is going for human consumption. This is the only market for horse meat that is at all lucrative or large-scale. When the inspectors were pulled it meant that Cavel (and the two Texas plants if they had not already been closed) would not be able to sell their product for human consumption. Cavel closed on Thursday, March 29.
Can they appeal? The suit was against the USDA and its director Michael Johanns, but the slaughter plants did a maneuver called "intervening" as defendants. Essentially they voluntarily made themselves defendants. The USDA can appeal, but to this point it has made ambiguous statements about whether it plans to. The USDA spokesperson said the agency would comply with the district court's decision.
Jim Tucker has said publicly that Cavel will appeal. We can probably expect Cavel and even possibly the two Texas plants to appeal early this week. If they do, they will ask for a stay of the judgment so that they could go back to slaughtering. Their chances of winning an appeal are probably slim, but a stay could buy them a year or more of killing.
If the slaughter houses (or just Cavel) make an appeal without the support of the USDA and Johanns (the named defendant), it may be problematic for their case, but that is all beyond reasonable prediction at this point. This judge is highly experienced and respected, and her opinion will not be taken lightly.
How long does this run? Many of us thought that when the 2006 budget year was over, the amendment would expire with it. This is not the case. The budgets are often passed as "Continuing Appropriations Resolutions." This means basically that all the rules of last year are carried forward. It appears that to end the Ensign-Byrd resolution the slaughter houses would have to amend the budget to remove it or not use a Continuing Appropriations Resolution.
What about exports? At this time I do not believe exports will be affected by the decision. If this is the case we can expect them to further increase. However, the exports to Mexico are already up from an average of 200 a week last year to over 800 a week this year as a result of the Texas plant closings. How much more capacity they have is the big question. The same goes for Canada.
Recently Cavel has been slaughtering about 1,000 per week (twice its old rate since the Texas closings) and exports have brought the weekly totals to approximately twice that. It seems unlikely that the foreign plants can absorb much more in the short term, but it is a matter of price. If the American kill buyers undercut the domestic dealers of Mexico and Canada, they could up the exports by displacing the local horses.
This also means that desperate dealers from the US may begin trying to unload their horses on the Mexican and Canadian plants and may start a price war. But this, along with the increased gas expense, will probably reduce the short-term profit and incentives for the kill buyers.
On the longer term, however, we can expect the plants to try to relocate by either buying foreign plants or building new ones. Plants have to be EU-approved, but we are not sure how much of an impediment this will be. We know that they plan to do this. They may also move horses to feedlots in Mexico and Canada to assure they don't get stuck with them here.
Battle fronts:
The anti-slaughter battle has never had so many fronts as it does today. The slaughter houses are being besieged on all sides. The Illinois plant faces not only the recent finding concerning the USDA inspections, but also an Illinois bill to ban slaughter that is working its way toward a vote, an increasingly public battle over their inability to control their sewage discharge, and the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (H.R. 503/S. 311) in Washington, D.C. They must win all three (in addition to the inspections issue) to survive.
The two Texas plants are all but dead. BelTex is apparently still slaughtering some exotics like buffalo, and Dallas Crown appears to be closed at last. Dallas Crown is also facing a long delayed ruling of the Kaufman Board of Adjustments ordering them to be closed for long standing sewer discharge violations. A Texas bill that would reverse the 1949 law banning slaughter has been withdrawn in the state Senate and faces growing opposition from horse people of all ranks. A similar measure in Texas was defeated several years ago, but we cannot yet afford to assume this one is dead.
Conclusions: If we do not act aggressively to get the AHSPA passed in the coming months we may see our horses subject to even more brutal trips and more cruel slaughter (especially in Mexico). We have won another crucial battle, but not the war. It remains to be seen how much fight the pro-slaughter forces still have left, but to date they have come back time and time again like Hollywood monsters that just won't die. The battle is costing them a fortune and their outlook is increasingly bleak. Still, these people cannot be underestimated.
John Holland
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BUCK HORSE SLAUGHTER NOW!!!!! - 
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