It took many years for the US to finally put a ban on horse slaughter. Thanks to the Obama administration, this is all going to change, and they are working to legalize horse slaughter once again in the United States. While it may be common practice to consume horse meat in other countries, the United States does not participate. The meat packaged here is sold and exported. Why is this so wrong? It is in the inhumane, and cruel treatment that horse slaughter has been done in this country in the past. To expect anything different would be insanity. The brutality forced on these majestic animals must not be allowed in our country. The government has used horse slaughter in the past to control the wild horse populations. This can now be done by administering infertility drugs to the animals and capturing and finding homes for certain horses, as has been done in the past during the time when it has been illegal to slaughter horses in the US. When a horse owner has used his/her horse, for riding, for therapy, for competition, racing, breeding, when the horses have given everything they have, many have been sentenced to a fate far crueler than just death alone. These beautiful animals are sent to auction houses, where they are crammed into corals, and run through the auctioneer's coral, sold to the highest bidder (usually by the pound and bought by "killer buyers") already frightened and confused the horses are then loaded onto cattle trucks. These transport trailers are not built for horses, and most of them have more than one level. The horses are stuffed onto these trucks, shoved and prodded until there is not even room to adjust one's weight. Many times the frightened horses will try to jump over one another, some fall and are killed after being trampled. Some horses have fallen through the doors from the second loading levels, and have ridden for days with broken limbs, or worse. These horses are driven days at a time in these conditions, without access to food or water, without the ability to stretch out to relieve themselves. Starving of thirst and hunger, frightened and injured the journey to the slaughter house has just begun. Once there, the doors will open, and men/women would drag frightened horses out by their tails, or any means necessary, dragging the ones that didn't make it, with wenches and chains around their ankles. They horses are then put into holding corals, which lead into chutes. Once through the one way door, the slippery stock walls go up from behind trapping the horse. A "knocker" (the person who's responsibility is to shoot the horse in the head with a metal plug) "knocks" the horse. At this time the horse is still not released from this torturous situation, the floor falls out from under him, and he falls. Stunned and unable to move (to keep the meat as fresh as possible) the horses tail is removed, and then its feet, these parts are discarded. The hooks are then run through the backs of the legs and the horse is hoisted into the air upside down. At which point his throat is slit, or the head is removed and his misery is ended. When a horse/s are stolen, many times they end up in slaughter houses. It is the responsibility of the house to verify the legally of the arrival of the horse, but this almost never happens. If a horse is branded or tattooed, the owners may be contacted not to claim the horse, but to identify the hide/s. This is a gruesome, cruel and grotesque practice. To inflict such a malicious end to animals that have carried us, our children and grandchildren, horses that lived to do what we asked of them, work on the streets, with officers, and military, with disabled children and adults, who have made their people money by running until they could no longer beat the lead horse. Who had baby after baby because it was what we required out of them, is wrong. Please help stop the legalization of horse slaughter in the United States.