This all started by people thinking they were doing a good thing with disastrous consequences. It's all convoluted but here's the breakdown: Unwanted horses don't have a "shelter" owners can take them too. Most rescues are full beyond capacity. Even putting horses to sleep can be too expensive for some owners. Whatever the reason, unwanted horses end up at auction. That's where kill buyers bid on them to get as many as possible for cheap and ship them to Canada or Mexico to be slaughtered.

BEFORE they are shipped they will go to a feed lot. This is the horses last stop and this is where volunteers and horse rescues work desperately to find these horses homes, collecting donations to pay the horses bail and find them a good home. Is it a great system? No. Do feedlots make money on these horses? Yes. Do feedlots need more oversight? Yes! Do we need a better system to address the overbreeding of horses? Definitely. But in the meantime, a group got together and decided that if feedlots couldn't make money selling the horses to rescue's and others then the horses would be cheaper at auction? But horses at auction don't get the visibility rescue groups can give them. Regardless, that group began petitioning Facebook and FB began shutting all the sites down. Their thinking appears to be that because of the feedlots, kill buyers are driving up the cost of horses at auction. Is that true? Probably. Does blocking people from being able to get these horses seen on FB to find homes fix the problem? Not even close. It's insanity. Now the horses not lucky enough to be bought by good people at auction will just ship right to slaughter. There's no logic to it. Every rationale in support of this ban is unproven.

I'm hoping maybe an outcry will turn this thing around because I can't begin to think of all the suffering this is causing. Best case scenario is the issues with feedlots get addressed, such as how the horses are cared for and knowingly misrepresenting horses. For now, horses are considered livestock, and have far fewer protections than pets do. So much needs to be done to end the intense suffering but it needs to be well thought out. Protections for horses needs to be increased, rescue groups that offer help for people unable to afford euthanasia when their horse is too old or sick so they don't end up on a slaughter truck, more oversight by the USDA, and an end to shipping horses out of the country to slaughter by passing the SAFE Act, maybe even making pleasure horse expenses tax deductible to ease the financial weight.

Thanks for caring!! I wish I knew a way to get this into the news cycle somehow!!