People can't understand why anyone would pay $50 to put a horse down and another $150 to have a "dead hauler" take the carcass to a renderer, she says.
The only thing about the slaughterhouses that has raised concern among this breed of Texas horse owner is the fear that their stock could be stolen and sold to the plants before anyone is the wiser. "A few years ago, we had some boys who were stealing horses around here and taking them straight to Beltex," says Renee Robinson, who raises show horses in Keller.
Jody Henderson, director of brand inspection for the Fort Worth-based Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, says rustlers have been known to lame high-quality horses purposely by driving spikes into their hooves, then sell them for slaughter.
To curb such abuses, a Texas law was passed last year that required people who bring horses to the two Texas slaughterhouses to show identification to brand inspectors, who must then record and keep descriptions of horses and brands sold by each individual. The law specifically requires those lists to be made public each month and put on file with county clerks. But officials with Beltex and Dallas Crown admit they don't file their lists in Kaufman or Tarrant Counties. "Nobody does that," says Heberlein. "The county, they don't know what to do with the list."
Tarrant County Clerk Suzanne Henderson says that is simply not true. "We'd be happy to keep those records. Nobody has talked to us about this. The law is very clear about the requirement to file the lists."
Heberlein dismisses the whole issue with a single thought: "The horse-theft problem was blown way out of proportion." In the year the brand inspectors have been at the two plants, not a single horse coming in has been proven stolen, he says.
For the past 10 years, The Humane Society of the United States has been a prime force in the campaign against abuse of horses in the slaughter trade. In 1994, for instance, it released to the press corps at the Kentucky Derby the results of an extensive investigation. The report, which included videotape shot at Beltex, condemned the harsh treatment of horses in transit to the plants.
Investigators found horses being shipped in double-decker trailers barely tall enough to allow the animals to stand. Stallions, foals, and mares about to give birth were packed in nose-to-tail--a situation that ignores horses' instincts and encourages fights and injuries.
Pushed by the Humane Society to act, Washington lawmakers instead yielded to the farm lobby, which wanted little to do with livestock regulation. In 1996, a watered-down measure was included in the farm bill that called for development of guidelines for the transportation of horses to slaughter. No appropriations were passed for the rules actually to be written.
"It was a press-release victory," Doyle says. "Nothing happened until they caught wind of our initiative. Then they found 400 grand to write some regulations that, from what we've seen so far, will regulate present practices into law."
Officials in the slaughter industry say gentler transport of horses to their plants is in their interests. "We want a uniform product," Heberlein says. "It does us no good to have an animal with cuts and bruises that's dehydrated and stressed."
Rifts between Doyle on one hand and the Humane Society and the American Horse Protection Association on the other over the yet-to-be-completed federal guidelines have infected the California campaign.
"We don't understand how the initiative will accomplish what it says it is going to accomplish," says Robin Lohnes, executive director of the American Horse Protection Association in Washington, dismissing the California push. "Besides, we haven't been asked to support it."
On the other side, Doyle says she doesn't need the support of groups she accuses of taking millions of dollars in donations in the name of animals, then accommodating the killer industry with compromise.
If California voters pass the initiative, as nearly everyone says they will, a legal battle is all but guaranteed. The slaughterhouse owners already are considering a court challenge on the principle that shipment of horses is interstate commerce that cannot be limited by the states.
"God gave people the right to do with their personal property as they see fit, so there will be some constitutional issues that will be addressed too," Heberlein says.
Meanwhile, Bailey Kemp and his business rivals will continue to labor in their grim trade. Answering newspaper ads, combing sale barns for eligible stock, Kemp says his business plan is elementary: "I'll buy any horse that will make me money. Simple as that.
