Wild For Life Foundation - Wild Horse Legislation

BACKGROUND

In May of 2017 the United States, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released their 2018 “BUDGET JUSTIFICATIONS” with a call for approval of proposed provisions that if passed would strip protections and effectively allow the BLM to shoot and kill wild horses and burros and sell wild horses and burros for slaughter.

On July 20, 2017 – The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Udall-Graham Amendment, introduced by Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) which includes defunding language to prohibit U.S. Department of Agriculture from hiring horse meat inspectors in the U.S. This in turn prevents horse slaughter plants from being re-opened in the U.S. in 2018. The Amendment was passed in the full committee by a bipartisan vote and will effectively continue a ban on the gruesome horse slaughter industry on U.S. soil.

Protection is however still needed for America's horses from the exportation across federal borders where they continue to face gruesome slaughter every day. The Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act was announced on Friday, Aug 4, 2017 by US Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Susan Collins (R-Maine). Its purpose is to forbid slaughter on American soil and ban any related interstate or foreign commercial activity, such as the export of horse meat or the transport of live horses to slaughterhouses in other countries. The bill must pass the house and senate before it can become a law. Learn more about anti slaughter legislation here

THE SENATE HAS YET TO VOTE on the BLM/ DOI appropriations proposal regarding the killing and sale of Mustangs and burros - which will take place toward the end of summer.