Jenna Landry, is the founder of American Horse Project. This is an initiative dedicated to the protection of equines within U.S. borders. Specifically, the organization is focused on the issue of horse slaughter and the atrocities associated with the practice of eating horse meat. Each year approximately 150,000 American horses, ponies, donkeys, mules and burros (equines) are shipped to Mexico and Canada where they are brutally murdered.
More than 32 countries each horse meat, yet American equines are not raised to be eaten. More than 110 medications are given to horses over their lifetimes that the USDA and European Union deem illegal to administer to animals raised for human consumption. However, if American horses are slaughtered their meat could actually be toxic and is poisoning the human food chain.
To combat the problem, American Horse Project is focused on raising general awareness of the horse slaughter issue, promoting the gelding of stallions to reduce the population of unwanted horses, offering options for humane euthanasia, facilitating the training or re-training of horses for second careers, providing transportation to facilitate equine adoption and through the development of a nationwide horse rescue directory.
Horse slaughter has been banned in the United States since 2007. Some believe that ended the possibility of slaughter for horses. To the contrary, it simply moved the practice from inside the United States to outside the United States where the industry is unregulated. As a result, thousands of horses are slaughtered annually at facilities where there is no regard for the sensitive nature of these beautiful animals.
The American Horse Project contends that equine meat is highly toxic for human consumption and is ending up in our global food supply. It may end up in products that are improperly labeled or not labeled at all. Since our meat products no longer require labeling for country of origin, it may be impossible to know where a meat product came from.
Horses are one of the world’s most intuitive creatures. As a prey animal, in order to survive, they must be continuously aware of their surroundings. Some may say they have developed a sixth sense – their acute intuition. They have an amazing ability to mirror what the human body and emotions are telling them and reflect that emotion back to us. Horses are used in therapy for a wide variety of reasons. They can help individuals with physical disabilities as well as emotional traumas.
If you want to help, you can do so by volunteering or donating. You can donate to the “Geld a Stallion Fund,” the “Transportation & Disaster Fund” or the “Humane Euthanasia Fund.” Now is the time to end the practice of American equine slaughter.
