America’s wild horses and burros again need your help during a busy time in the U.S. Congress.
The House Interior Subcommittee on Tuesday approved a Fiscal Year 2019 Interior appropriations bill that includes language that would bar the Bureau of Land Management from killing healthy wild horses and burros.
On Wednesday, the full House Appropriations Committee voted for the second straight year to keep open the door to legal horse slaughter as part of its FY19 Agriculture appropriations bill.
Key Senate and House Appropriations committees will have the opportunity to stand up for our horses, both wild and domestic, by voting to keep in place needed protections. That follows a mixed message sent on horse slaughter by two House committees this week.
- Call (202) 225-3121 today. Tell your senators that you:
- Oppose any amendments to the Fiscal Year 2019 Interior Appropriations bill allowing BLM to kill wild horses and burros which is scheduled for markup in early June;
- Support the SAFE Act (S. 1706) to ban slaughter and the transportation of horses for slaughter.
- Contact members of the Senate Appropriations Committee(see link for list) and urge them to: Support the “horse slaughter defund amendment” to the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2019 Agriculture appropriations bill, scheduled to be considered early next week.
- Tell your representative that you:
- Oppose any amendments to the Fiscal Year 2019 Interior Appropriations bill allowing BLM to kill wild horses and burros;
- Support the SAFE Act (H.R. 113) to ban slaughter and the transportation of horses for slaughter.
- Support the Horse Transportation Safety Act (H.R. 4040) to ban hauling horses on double-deck trailers under all circumstances.
Please help spread the word by sharing this email and our social media posts with call graphics like the one above.
Here’s why:
Protecting wild horses
The House Interior Subcommittee on Tuesday approved a Fiscal Year 2019 Interior appropriations bill that includes language that would bar the Bureau of Land Management from killing healthy wild horses and burros.
While this is good news, this first step in the process does not prevent an amendment being offered that would allow the BLM to use tax dollars to “euthanize” – shoot – healthy animals when the bill advances to the House Appropriations Committee next week.
That’s exactly what happened last year as part of the FY18 budget process: The full committee passed, on a voice vote, an amendment allowing BLM to kill healthy animals.
It then took months of effort – and tens of thousands of calls, emails and letters from advocates like you — to ensure Senate language preventing BLM from using tax dollars to do so remained in the final omnibus spending package.
The possibility of such an amendment being offered makes it critically important that wild horse and burros advocates call their members of Congress – right now — to make clear that Americans want to see wild horses and burros humanely managed on the range – and that they will not stand for the needless killing of healthy animals.
Note: Congress views the wild horse and horse slaughter issues separately. The management of wild horses, including proposals to “euthanize” them, is part of the Interior appropriations process; horse slaughter falls under Agriculture.
Horse slaughter threat
On Wednesday, the full House Appropriations Committee voted for the second straight year to keep open the door to legal horse slaughter as part of its FY19 Agriculture appropriations bill.
It did so by rejecting the so-called horse slaughter defund amendment authored by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif. That amendment would have barred the U.S. Department of Agriculture from using tax dollars to hire horsemeat inspectors, effectively blocking the return of horse slaughter plants in the absence of a permanent federal ban.
A voice vote was taken on the amendment, meaning individual votes were not recorded.
The focus on the horse slaughter issue now turns to the Senate Agriculture Subcommittee, which is due to markup its version of the ag appropriations bill on Tuesday.
Last year, the Senate prevailed in conference with the House, keeping language defunding horse slaughter in the final FY18 spending package.
Both the House and Senate are also again considering a permanent ban on horse slaughter and the transportation of horses for slaughter. The Safeguard American Food Exports Act (SAFE) has amassed support from 211 House co-sponsors and 29 Senate co-sponsors.