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Tex-Mex Horse Meat

Continued from page 1

Published on January 09, 2008 at 10:46am

To Moore, efforts to ban horse slaughter are just another misguided and irrational attempt to put people out of work. The sale price for horses has dropped, according to auctioneers and media reports, and Moore says she has lost between $10,000 and $20,000 in the past year because before the domestic slaughterhouses closed, the company hauled horses from around the country to the Beltex facility in Fort Worth.

"I heard last month the buyers were scared the market was gonna be nothing," she says. "These ladies give money to the Humane Society, and they're giving money to disrupt our economy. People in Dallas, they don't have any touch with rural America...Why would you slit fellow Americans' throats?" Not only is the slaughter ban economically disadvantageous, she says, it's an example of encroaching governmental regulations. "This is just the beginning," she says. "If they say you can't eat horse meat, next thing they'll say you can't eat goat. It's about the government telling you what you can and can't do."

It's not that she has anything personal against Sondergeld-Queen, she says, but her job is to make sure the auction goes smoothly. Plus, she doesn't like being directed by a foreigner. "What really burns me up is, you come over here from another country and tell me what to do?" Moore says. "Can you imagine me going to Germany and telling them what to do?"

As for claims that horses are subjected to brutal treatment during the auction and slaughter process, Moore, like most slaughter supporters, argues that banning the practice only results in a surplus of lame, neglected horses. Slaughter opponents maintain the animals can be absorbed by shelters and humanely put to death via veterinarian-assisted euthanasia.

"I love my animals, but I learned a long time ago that if a dog gets run over, I get me another one—there's lots of dogs that need love," Moore says. "If these activists in order to cook a meal had to go out and wring a chicken's neck, cut its head off, boil hot water, take its guts out, skin 'em and cook 'em for dinner, they wouldn't be running around disturbing everyone else's business."

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