They slaughter horses, don't they?

Court: Horse slaughter can resume in DeKalb
(Chicago Tribune, reg. req'd)

By John Biemer
Tribune staff reporter
Published May 2, 2007, 7:42 PM CDT

A federal court is allowing the last operating horse slaughterhouse in the United States, located in DeKalb, to temporarily resume butchering horses for sale to overseas markets.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided 2-1 Tuesday to grant Cavel International slaughterhouse's emergency request for a stay as it considers an appeal of a lower court's order a month ago that halted federal inspection of the horses, effectively shutting down the business. In that decision, a U.S. District Court judge determined that an arrangement in which slaughterhouses were paying the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cover costs of their health inspections was illegal.

That arrangement developed in early 2006 after Congress cut off funding for horse slaughterhouse inspections the previous year. The Humane Society of the United States sued, arguing that the funding arrangement was a conflict of interest and that the USDA had implemented it without conducting required environmental assessments.

In its decision Tuesday to grant the stay, the appeals court indicated that Cavel International had argued "that it will go out of business absent a stay" because it would not be able to operate while the appeal is pending.

In the dissenting opinion, one judge noted the company did not fold during a two-year shutdown due to a fire and pointed out that it no longer has two horse slaughterhouse competitors in Texas after they were shut down in unrelated court rulings earlier this year. "If Cavel was able to recover its clientele after a temporary shutdown when it faced competition, its current predicament without competition might be less dire than Cavel proposes," the judge wrote.

James Tucker, Cavel's plant manager in DeKalb, declined to comment Wednesday.

The slaughterhouse cannot operate without federal inspectors on site, and none was there Wednesday, said Steven Cohen, spokesman for the USDA's food, safety and inspection service. Cohen said the agency was "in discussions in terms of when it would be appropriate for inspection program personnel to return."

The Belgian-owned Cavel plant slaughters about 1,000 horses a week to export its meat, mainly to Europe. When the March 28 U.S. District Court order shut down the business, it had been the only U.S. facility still processing horse meat for human consumption.

Nancy Perry, vice president of government affairs for the Humane Society of the United States, said the organization was "deeply disappointed" in the stay order, but she said it "adds urgency" to legislative efforts to ban the slaughtering of horses for human consumption.

"We need to end this barbaric business of slaughtering horses for profit permanently," Perry said.

The Illinois House of Representatives passed such a measure two weeks ago on a 74-41 vote. The legislation is now under consideration in the state Senate's Public Health Committee.
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I'm baffled by the controversy here. Why should there be a ban on slaughtering horses? Is it because we regard them more like pets than like other animals that we routinely slaughter such as cows and pigs? What's the big deal?

(Note: I couldn't decide in which forum -- Legal, Philosophy & Debate, Politics, General -- this thread should go. If the mods have a better idea than I do, then by all means move it.)