Horse slaughter is one of the issues that brings us full circle regarding the ever popular Black Beauty. Because despite all our advances as a society, we still flog, beat, kick , hit, starve, drug, over-work, over-breed and over-race our horses. And when we are done with them, when they cannot perform for us any longer, we send them down the road in a double deck cattle truck to be killed at the slaughter house. This is what opponents to horse slaughter call owners right to a salvage value; as in aluminum cans, old cars and used computers. However, horses are not like aluminum cans to be crushed under foot when empty. Indeed, we have specifically bred them to be sensitive and intelligent companions to us in work and pleasure. Throughout history they have carried our mail, pulled our wagons west, herded our cattle and taught our children to ride. And when our agrarian society became urban and technological, unlike food and fiber animals, horses moved with us as we left the farms for the city.

Today horses continue this history of companionship by taking us on trail rides, over jumps in show rings, to the winners circle on race tracks, providing needed therapy to the disabled and still teaching our children the pleasures of riding and the meaning of responsibility and compassion by caring for an animal. It is precisely because of this history and the fact that horses are not now, nor have they ever been, food and fiber animals, and are even taxed as a pleasure animal, that makes our stance on horse slaughter an important measure of our collective character as a society