S.D. horse slaughterhouse bill sponsor still trying

The bill to offer state loans to start a horse slaughterhouse in South Dakota may not have been to the legislative abattoir after all. Its sponsor tells the Rapid City Journal that support for it is growing, and the Journal's Bill Harlan reports that a committee rejected it "mainly for procedural reasons" after a lobbying campaign from the Animal Welfare Institute.

Sen. Frank Kloucek, D-Scotland, "proposed the bill because the last two horse-processing plants in the United States –- in Texas and Illinois –- were closed by state laws. A bill in Congress would institute a nationwide ban," Harlan reports. "In the meantime, Kloucek said, hundreds of thousands of unwanted horses are languishing, either at taxpayers’ expense, or at the owners’ expense. And some horses are simply abandoned."

Harlan reports Kloucek might try "a legislative maneuver to force another committee vote, then the vote of the full Senate," and if that fails he "will ask the Legislature’s Executive Board for a summer study."

“It’s appalling that we don’t have horse harvesting in the United States,” Kloucek told Harlan, who writes, "He also pointed out that the Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments passed a resolution last year, unanimously, encouraging Congress to support new horse-processing plants."

Harlan recounts supportive messages Kloucek has received, including one from John Kabeiseman, a Yankton horse trainer, who told Harlan, “A kill market sets a base price for horses.” Harlan explains, "With no kill market, people are forced to care for old, sick or unmanageable horses, at great expense. Or, they have to put them down, which Kabeiseman said was difficult." (Read more)