The Brutal Killing of Horses is One Step Closer to Becoming a Crime in Colorado

Breaking News: SB-23-038-Bill to Ban Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption gets public hearing on Feb. 2nd at 1:30pm.

Colorado Residents Must Act NOW to contact their local lawmakers to make sure they VOTE YES on this important legislation. www.horsesinourhands.org/colorado

“Horse slaughter is barbaric and inherently cruel, yet every year hundreds of Colorado horses are being shipped to slaughter! There are plenty of homes like our rescue that these horses can go to, but Kill Buyers routinely outbid rescues and families to meet their quota for foreign owned slaughter plants” “ said Rebekah Keat and Siri Lindley, CoFounders of Believe Ranch and Rescue in Colorado and Horses in Our Hands.

“We hope Colorado residents will send a letter to legislators and attend the public hearing at the State Capitol in Denver on Thursday, February 2nd at 1:30pm in Room 352. The brutal trip these horses take to Canada and Mexico is horrific. No food or water and if they survive the trip, they are often dismembered alive. Is this how we treat our pets and national icons? This bill must pass. Please send a letter by going to www.horsesinourhands.org/colorado”.

“It is cruel. Horses helped to settle this country, plow the fields, and deliver mail. This is the ultimate betrayal,” said Roland Halpern, a board member of Colorado Voters for Animals, an advocacy group that helped develop the bill.

In 2010, Colorado lawmakers passed legislation declaring horses a cherished part of western heritage.

Hundreds of Colorado horses, including wild horses that the federal Bureau of Land Management rounds up on public land, have been sold at livestock auctions where buyers then move them to Mexico or Canada for processing as food for human consumption.

Unlike animals (chickens, cows, pigs) raised to be food, horses are companion animals. They’re administered drugs and vaccines that advocates warn have never been tested for safety if ingested by humans. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food safety division prohibits importing horse meat for human consumption into the United States.

Colorado would join California, Illinois, New Jersey and Texas — states where lawmakers have banned the sale of horse meat for human consumption.