Under Trump, hundreds of America’s wild horses are being sold for as little as $25 and being sent to slaughter, report says
https://www.wcax.com/2026/08/23/under-trump-hundreds-americas-wild-horses-are-being-sold-little-25-being-sent-slaughter-report-says/?amp%3Butm_medium=organicclicks&%3Btbref=hpOpen linkView original on lemmy.today
23 replies
We are the extinction event
They've been doing this way way before the turd got into office. The BLM, used to pay you to take one of these horses. They're wild mustangs and have 0 flight and all fight. They mainly do this so they keep the population in check, since.... surprise they have no real predators.
On top of all this, horse slaughter has been going on for decades, unfortunately it's banned in the USA, which is fucking stupid. So horses get shipped to Mexico and Canada. Trips that can take days and have horses packed into trailers. These dumbass rescues thought they were doing everyone a favor getting it banned. Turns out it created way way more neglect. Instead of people bringing their pet to the sale and knowing it would be slaughtered a few miles down the road, they keep the thing and it withers away, or it goes to the sale anyways and then shipped thousands of miles away.
Horse slaughter needs to be legalized again, the animal shouldn't waste away in a field and if, after death it can become feed, then that should happen. Poisoning the animal and then the ground is a waste and a terrible thing.
They don't have any predators because the same ones encouraging the state to thin out their numbers, the ranchers, killed all the predators. Mountain lions and wolves, and coyotes for that matter.
Those are not natural predators of a horse though. And most ranchers and farmers now have realized how big of a mistake that was killing off the predators, which are making huge comebacks because they realize how bad it was for the ecosystem.
Horses are also not native to the US. They're way faster than a buffalo and a lot more dangerous.
You are incorrect on near all accounts here pal. Horses originated in North America and were hunted to extinction 10k years back by the clovis hunters. They were originally the size of dogs, and at some point made it across the Beiring Strait when frozen.
Wolves and Mountain Lions absolutely will kill and eat horses. Ranchers and the right wing in general absolutely did not realize it was a mistake to kill them, in fact they are trying to finish the job and extirpate them from the continent.
Idk where you were left with the impression ranchers stopped killing wolves and pumas. They like to tell their people to shoot, shovel, and shut up, about killing them illegally. And there are precious few wolves left. A couple thousand in Minnesota, a couple hundred in Michigan, a couple lone packs in the north cascades, (they killed an entire pack some years back, one of only a few,) and yellowstone has some.
Not comprehensive, but those are the biggest populations of wolves that I am aware of, not sure of the Sierra Nevadas it seems like they must have some too.
You know who else doesn't have predators...humans.
Gotta fix that navy supply issue somehow...
Thereby keeping "beef" affordable?
It would need to first BE affordable in order to keep it affordable.
Oh.. I'm vegan. Thought it was for glue.
Just the hooves as I understand it. AndI am sure they make it synthetically mostly now. The amount of glue used dwarfs the number of hooves in this world. Ie cardboard alone. I worked at a cardboard factory once, they use a shitload of glue.
In a roundabout way, this move is meant to keep feeding areas available, probably for cows. Most of these slaughtered horses will end up being glue and animal feed. While they've done a fantastic job of 'reducing regulations' I don't think we're quite at wild horse meat substitutions for beef.
Maybe not so fun fact, cheval is horse meat, not legal in the us, much like beef they are raised in really specific ways, so I kind of doubt these wild horses will be good for consumption.
Dude the US is so far past horse meat substitution in beef. It happened 13 years ago in Europe and there was a more minor one in Canada. That was with functioning food inspection agencies, the US has basically stopped food inspections altogether.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-food-safety-inspections-plans/
There is nothing wrong with wild meat, nor cheval
"let them eat horse"
where did you put that pesky guillotine?
What is the deal with this article? There are estimated to be tens of thousands, so it seems like they're misleading you with incomplete information because "Trump bad." But then if you actually read the article it says that it's thousands of horses, not hundreds, so maybe he is actually bad. Or is he? It says the average since 1991 is around ten thousand, which would mean "Trump good" because the recent years are well bellow the only historical reference they provide. Or are they talking about the ones that are being sold as livestock, which were only tens of horses, not hundreds like the title claims? What are we supposed to get from reading this? Is this normal or not?
If killing horses isn’t your thing, what about the fact that they spend $3000 capturing the horses and sell them for $25?
The number isn’t the point of the article tho. Neither is the money loss.
It’s the fact that killing wild horses is illegal. They tried to buy a gas chamber and realized they couldn’t so they started selling them to a middleman first who man who sends them off to slaughter.
This way they can kill horses but claim they didn’t.
The headline is not the point of the article is a kind of wild ngl
Why won't Americans just eat horse.
Ecology is just a theory. Capitalism is real............... /s
Feral horses.
No, wild horses.
Either all wild horses are feral in America or only those who've lived one to two generations outside of domestication are. There are no horses in the states that aren't descendents of domestic horses. These are more than two generations removed from domestication, so we'd normally call them wild (even if they're actually semi-feral)
Horses are actually native to the Americas, they got hunted out by the Clovis hunters 10k years back. They originated here and spread across the frozen Beiring Strait.
The original horses were small, like the size of dogs.