President Obama earlier this month quietly signed into law a spending bill that restores the American horse-slaughter industry, just a few months after a government investigation said the ban on slaughtering for human consumption was backfiring.
The agriculture spending bill Mr. Obama signed the week before Thanksgiving did not include a ban on the inspection of horse meat — a backdoor prohibition that had, since 2006, effectively halted the U.S. horse-slaughter industry.
In June the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s official investigative branch, released a report saying the ban had shut down U.S. slaughter, but that only depressed prices for horses here while causing many of the animals to be shipped to “foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply.”
In unusually blunt language, GAO suggested Congress and Mr. Obama reconsider the ban.
The options facing Congress were to further ban export of horses for slaughter or to lift the domestic slaughter ban. Congress chose the latter.
And the response from PETA..................................... Still waiting.
Washington Times
