From Winner To Dinner
DEKALB, Ill., June 16, 2004
Jockey Bill Shoemaker raises his whip as he rides his mount Ferdinand to
win the Kentucky Derby, May 3, 1986. (Photo: AP)
Americans don't eat horses, but three U.S. plants slaughter horses for
export, including a brand new slaughterhouse in Illinois.
(CBS) It was the 1986 Kentucky Derby. Against 18-1 odds, Ferdinand left
the pack and entered history.
But two years ago, after being sold to stud in Japan, Ferdinand was
slaughtered. As CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports, it was
probably for food, just as tens of thousands are slaughtered every year in
the United States. But the slaughter of a champion has outraged the
thoroughbred community in America.
Nick Zito, the winning trainer in this year's Belmont Stakes, is part of
a growing movement to ban the killing of horses for human consumption.
"The horse is a special animal in America," says Zito. "He's a symbol."
Americans don't eat horses, but three U.S. plants slaughter horses for
export, including a brand new slaughterhouse in Illinois.
"It's marketed in Europe like the other meats," says Cavel International
manager James Tucker.
Tucker says many horse owners see their animals as livestock, not as
pets.
"We have a lot of horse people who say it should happen," says Tucker.
"They see it as a service. We recycle a resource that's otherwise wasted."
The way that horses are killed - a steel bolt into their heads - is also
central to this debate. Critics believe that too often it takes more than
one blow and that makes the process inhumane.
Gail Vacca of American Horse Protection Coalition treats her retired
racehorses like rich uncles. She believes that slaughter betrays a horse's
trust in man.
"And then in the end when we are through with them, we're going to drag
them to the slaughterhouse and let them suffer a miserable death?" she says.
"Absolutely it's betrayal."
Critics of this practice say slaughterhouses miss too much.
"That's absolutely false," says Tucker. "If we would miss, too many times
we would be shut down by the USDA."
Two bills to shut down horse slaughter altogether are stalled in
Congress.
"You know a horse is really part of our culture, and you know I think
when you lose your culture, you lose your soul," says Zito.
For now, America's three horse slaughterhouses will stay open for
business, unless the law changes, and horses are treated as pets - not
protein - at the finish line of their lives.
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