As Derby looms, Ky. paper reports on horse crisis

The horse crisis made the front page of The Courier-Journal today, with a situation piece that offered no big news but a magisterial overview and update of the problem, perhaps timed to what folks in Louisville call Derby Week -- the seven days leading up to Saturday's Kentucky Derby. At left, Suzanna Thomas works with a rescued horse at the Maker's Mark Secretariat Center. (Photo by Michael Clevenger, C-J)

Greg Hall notes the demise of the last U.S. slaughterhouses that processed horsemeat for human consumption, mainly in Europe and Japan, a doubling of the number of horses shipped to Mexico for slaughter, and drought that has raised feed costs. "Discoveries of malnourished horses have renewed questions that perhaps it's necessary to make slaughter available for horse owners," he writes. "They could collect maybe a couple hundred dollars by selling an old horse for slaughter rather than continue to pay thousands a year for care and feeding -- a situation with which some horse advocates sympathize. . . . About the only agreement among slaughter proponents and opponents is that the increased costs of fuel and food are issues for horse owners."

Noting various horse-rescue operations, Hall writes, "It was five years ago that reports surfaced that 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand had been killed in a Japanese slaughterhouse. The stories motivated horse-rescue operations and shocked Americans who weren't aware that horses are routinely butchered for food in other countries." He adds, "New sites, some at prisons, are planned." A Kentucky prison on Interstate 64, next to its northern junction with I-75, already has a Thoroughbred retirement farm. (Read more)