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Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
And it was probably instituted in a hurry to shut up well-meaning animal lovers who don't think through to the root of the problem, which is too many unwanted horses. But they don't want to think about a complicated issue, so they focus on "horse slaughter bad!" make a stink, the racetrack management does the quickest thing it can think of to make the problem go away (okay! No slaughter tolerated here!) and then everyone is satisfied for a little while except the horses, who don't see any improvement in their eventual fates because nothing effective actually gets done.
If people want a long-term solution they're going to have to be willing to put pressure on the racing industry to (pardon the pun) pony up the $$ to see that the horses' retirements are funded and that the ones too infirm to enjoy a quality of life get humanely euthanized. But that's a lot of work because it requires owners and/or trainers and/or racetracks and/or the states that have race tracks to give up something, even though it likely would be a very small amount of money individually or per state (I would guess less than one percent of stakes purses or even handle would do wonders in funding rescue places). And in the ongoing war between kindness and commerce, I think kindness usually doesn't fare well.
And I think a lot of these animal lovers aren't really willing to put in the time and effort to work for a solution that would actually be in the best interests of the horses. How many anti-horse slaughter people do I know who eat factory-raised beef, poultry or pork? They're against horse cruelty, but, while they feel kind of bad about the fact that the chicken they're eating spent its short miserable life in an 8X10 cage with six other birds (with their beaks cut off), actually doing something about that would require inconveniencing themselves (spending more money on humanely raised meat, or limiting their meat intake) so they don't bother. And yet they expect people in the racing industry to be better human beings than they are because horses are prettier than chickens? Give me a break.
Sorry to ramble- I went on the page of one of the places involved in the Paragallo mares and the long list of very nice looking horses up for adoption really depressed me. So many horses and so few homes.
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i enjoyed your rant...but the chicken part is incorrect-chickens (broilers and fryers) grow up in huge, open houses-so do turkeys for that matter. they only go in cages when they get on the truck to go to the processer. if any manage to escape once out of the house, they're free-and i've seen some get loose in the past.
as for beaks getting cut off, i haven't seen that either. maybe it's egg layers they do that to? i have no idea. but there are a lot of chicken houses around here, that's how i know about them. i've been in one once. uncomfortably hot, and boy does it stink in there.