Quote Originally Posted by coldblooded View Post
Horses are not slaughtered for human consumption on the American market (there may be a small demand for it here but not nearly like other countries). The meat is exported and/or used for pet food, as far as I know.
Yep. There are technically no laws against eating horse, or even dog, in the US, but there is a very strong taboo against doing it and you would be hard pressed to find horse meat for human consumption. Most horses are given vaccinations and medications that deem them unsuitable for human consumption-it says right on the container-so if you wanted to safely eat a horse it would have to be raised like cattle.

There aren't kill shelters, that I know of, for horses because they are very expensive to dispose of unless you have a large plot of land and big machines. There are cremation facilities but those cost money. That's why slaughter houses are the closest is gets for horses who are unlucky enough to end up with bad owners. Some of the bad owners are decent enough to drop the horses off in national parks before they die, I suppose that's better than sending them to their deaths-I'm assuming that's what they think as well-but it's causing lots of problems with all the loose horses.

A friend of mine loads up his horses and drives to Colorado, I believe, to go to the national/state parks to pick up free horses. The rangers count how many horses you have in the trailer when you go into the park to ensure that you bring back all your horses. If you bring back any extra horses they thank you for it! A lot of the horses he picks up are ex race horses (we/he assumes, they have tattoos on their lips). I'm not sure if he has ever looked any of them up by their tattoos, but they are nice looking horses! I don't know if this was ever a problem before horse slaughter was shut down, but I've been hearing about how out of control dropping off horses has become in the last year or two.