Photo taken at RTF’s San Luis Obispo satellite sanctuary by Meg Frederick.
Great news! A record 238 members of the U.S. House of Representatives now support a bill to ban horse slaughter and the export of American horses for slaughter.
Thank you to everyone who has written or called their representative, and thanks to our advocacy team, including our lobbyist Chris Heyde, and our colleague organizations for helping us achieve unprecedented support for the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act!
And thank you to Reps. Liccardo, Greschenthaler and Morrison for becoming the latest to go on record in support of this important bipartisan bill.
The stand-alone SAFE Act bill is one of two routes Congress could take to finally remove the threat of slaughter for all equines, wild and domestic:
The second is language inserted into the surface transportation reauthorization bill that would ban shipping equines for slaughter.
The support for the SAFE Act will be enough to pass the bill if it’s brought up for a vote. That backing also sends a strong message that the ban should stay in the transportation bill, but we must keep pushing.
How to help
Call (202) 224-3121. Urge your representative to oppose any effort to remove the horse slaughter ban amendment when the surface transportation reauthorization bill comes up for a vote on the House floor.
Why it’s important:
Last year, 25,050 American equines died in Mexican or Canadian slaughterhouses.
The horse slaughter pipeline begins in auction yards. A handful of unscrupulous kill buyers profit from buying horses on the cheap, then shipping them over the border.
These include domestic horses, as well as an unknown number of once-wild-and-free horses and burros adopted or sold after government roundups.