REPORTER: Ginny Stein
The small town of Shipshewana, Indiana, deep in horse country. Here live one of the largest communities of Amish Christians in America. Their faith requires they live a pre-industrial life without engines. Horses play an integral role in their lives. It's an echo of a time when America, before the coming of the railroad, was dependent upon the horse.
It's auction day - people are bringing their horses in from across the region. Amish head to town, always on the lookout for a good horse. The Shipshewana horse auction is one of the largest horse sales in the country. Every week, up to 200 horses pass through these stalls. Some return to the paddock, others are bought to be slaughtered.
AUSTIONEER: He's just a 5-year-old Morgan-cross gelding. He's got a lot of miles on him, but he's got a lot of style. We've got a clean Coggins test on this horse.
For many dealers here, horse slaughter is simply a business.
REPORTER: What's your view about the slaughtering of horses?
CODY, HORSE DEALER: It has to be done - I mean, we live, we die. I mean, it is just part of life. I mean over in other countries where we slaughter horse and send the meat to, they worship cattle. I mean we worship horses. So it is just different religions and different ways of looking at things. I don't know if it right or it's wrong but it's what has to be done. I mean what can we do with them? Nothing. We can't do anything with the horses when they are done and old and over with.
Keith Lambright is both a farmer and a second-generation livestock auctioneer. He can barely contain his anger at animal rights activists who oppose horse slaughter, saying emotion has got in the way of common sense.
KEITH LAMBRIGHT, FARMER: Well I think there is a lot of emotion running high among these animal activists. The reality - it's here and they're making it rough on us. They act like they are concerned about the humane part of the animals but they are not being mistreated. We are only disposing of animals that are no good no longer - they are also lame, or blind or whatever it might be, and the reality of it is that they got to go somewhere.
But the animal welfare lobby in the United States sees it very differently and it is a multimillion-dollar lobby that packs clout. It released this video as part of its campaign to shut down the live export of horses for slaughter.
WOMAN: It is inhumane from the moment they leave in transport trucks to the moment they get inside those slaughter plants and are butchered for their meat for foreign diners. Thankfully all of the domestic horse slaughter plants are currently shut down but a lot of horses are still going to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.
In this country there are more than 10,000 registered charities devoted to protecting animals. The Humane Society of the United States is the largest. Wayne Pacelle is president and chief executive officer.
WAYNE PACELLE, CEO, HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE US: We had last year we had revenues of about $130 million and the year prior, $145 million. So we're probably double the size of our next largest animal protection organization in the United States.
In the face of pressure from animal rights groups last year, courts upheld state laws banning the slaughter of horses in Texas and Illinois. The last three slaughterhouses were closed.
WAYNE PACELLE: There are sometimes too many dogs and cats. We don't ship them to a slaughterhouse and export the meat. We need to care for these animals because we have responsibilities. In the relationship between humans and animals we hold all the cards. We have all the power. We should use that power responsibly and treat animals decently because they matter. Because they suffer.
At the horse auction there is no pretence about what happens to those horses that end up here. This is the kill pen.
REPORTER: How many horses are you selling today?
AUDIE STOKES: Five.
REPORTER: Why?
AUDIE STOKES: Can't afford to feed them. The price of grain is too high to keep all of them, so.
Audie Stokes hopes they'll be bought to be ridden, but he's a horse dealer and one way or another, he says, they must be sold.
REPORTER: If that didn't happen and they ended up being sold for kill would that worry you?
AUDIE STOKES: No. I mean they are down on all these slaughterhouses and stuff but I don't think they have a clue about what it's like to keep a horse and everything like that so I don't think they know what they are doing. I think all they want to do is just say it is inhumane when it is really not. Most of the city people don't have a clue what's going on. They don't have a clue. They don't have a clue.
At the heart of this debate is how a horse is valued. Whether it is farm animal or a companion. Amish farmers who can't speak on camera for religious reasons, but spoke to me off camera, are opposed to the ban. Keith Lambright explains.
KEITH LAMBRIGHT: For our vehicles, it is a horse for them. For our tractors it is a horse for them. When they are salvaging a horse they are slaughtering, it is no different to us getting rid of a used car. Whether we haul it to the junkyard or we trade it in on another new one and somebody else buys it. We get something for it. They have been hit hard that way and probably have lost 70% of its value, of their trade-in you might say, on their farm vehicle or piece of farm equipment.
While there is a greater acceptance in rural communities about killing horses for their meat, not all find it so easy to accept. Kurt Meyer and his girlfriend are not completely opposed to slaughtering horses but they believe the good ones should be saved. Two of the five they own come from the kill pen.
KURT MEYER: Sad, can't believe a lot of them go through the kill pen when some of them are good horses.
REPORTER: If you had the money would you buy?
KURT MEYER: Yeah, I've seen some go through here I would like to buy.
Since the closure of the slaughterhouses the price of horses considered to be at the low end of the market - either too old, or too thin - has dropped.
REPORTER: Give me an idea on price, what you could get and what you get now?
MAN: At one time you could get a thousand dollars for them and how you are getting, $300 and $400 and $500. Over abundance. No place to go.
REPORTER: You're upset by the ban on the slaughtering of horses?
MAN: Absolutely. I'd rather see them slaughtered than starved.
REPORTER: And that's what's happening?
MAN: Absolutely.
On the auction floor, kill buyers, as they're called, choose carefully. The price for a pound of flesh has halved since local slaughterhouses were shut down. But while they've closed in the US, the trade continues across the border to slaughterhouses in both Canada and Mexico, meaning horses now face days of gruelling travel to meet their end. What used to be a short journey can now be more than 2,000km away. Dale Haley is a kill buyer. He reluctantly agrees to speak with me.
DALE HALEY, KILL BUYER: Well they got to go - we went 300 miles before, now you go 1,400.
REPORTER: How do you work out the journey?
DALE HALEY: You don't. The expenses are getting so high, it's just going to completely shut the whole market down.
REPORTER: Where do you take them?
DALE HALEY: To the slaughterhouse? Saskatchewan, Canada. It's 1,400 miles.
REPORTER: When you do the maths on making it, on working it out - you have to buy a horse, you have to transport it, you've got to get an end sale result. Is it making money?
DALE HALEY: Uh-huh. But the margin of profit is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, to the point where it's about ready to just say no, forget it.
REPORTER: So what happens then?
DALE HALEY: Then these horses have no place to go. There will be no market for them. None. No place.
Keith Lambright accuses the Humane Society of failing to think through the ramifications of closing down local slaughterhouses. It's become a bitter issue.
KEITH LAMBRIGHT: I don't think they care what the end result is and I don't think they ever thought about it and now if they look at reality they are being more cruel to the animals than what we were before.
The Humane Society's response has been to blame the agricultural lobby for refusing to back its ban on the transportation of animals for live export.
WAYNE PACELLE: The only impediment to passing this legislation in the United States Congress to ban the live export of horses to Mexico are the very agriculture groups that are criticising us for stopping the activities in the States. If they joined with us in simply banning the export we could pass this legislation tomorrow. So they are hypocrites.
KEITH LAMBRIGHT: So it has really hurt the horse market as a whole and devaluated horses. There are horses that were worth $100-$150 to be rid of them, now they are worth zero because the freight is that much.
As lobbyists argue, it may be the rising costs of fuel that puts an end to the transportation, but already there are reports of an increase in horses being released to fend for themselves, and animal refuges struggling to cope with abandoned animals.
Reporter/Camera
GINNY STEIN
Editor
WAYNE LOVE
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
Additional footage courtesy of
Humane Society of the United States