The Western Producerpublished a story last month about Sue Wallis, a state legislator in Wyoming who’s attempting to build a horse slaughter plant in that state.
Wallis told theProducerthat Temple Grandin, the celebrated livestock expert, was designing procedures and protocols to ensure that horseswere killed humanely at the proposed slaughter house.
Grandin was unavailable to comment before deadline for that story but returned the call a week later to speak about her role in the Wyoming plant.
She also shared her opinions on the broader issue of horse slaughter in North America and the controversy earlier this year in Canada over videos of animal abuse at slaughter plants in Fort Macleod, Alta. and Massueville, Que.
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WP:How are you involved with the proposed plant in Wyoming?
TG:We have done no design work. All we did is we had one lunch meeting with her (Sue Wallis). Mark, my assistant, went up and looked at one place where they were thinking of building the plant and it was a junk-yard…. We have designed nothing at this point.
WP:Do you have a problem with them using your name in the promotion of their plant?
TG:If they actually build something decent, (it’s OK). But they haven’t built anything yet.
WP:A more general question: do you think there should be horse slaughter plants in the U.S.?
TG:The people who object, vehemently, to the horse slaughter plant, they don’t have any problem with killing (euthanizing) a perfectly healthy horse that’s lame and can no longer be ridden.
A lot of problems that horses have that dogs don’t, is that the dog is a pet right up to the end. A horse could have 10 to 15 years of additional life after he can’t be ridden. That’s a real bad problem that horses have…. We’ve got to get rid of horses that are being neglected.
One group of people say it’s not a problem and another group say it’s a big problem…. I went on the internet… using the keywords horse neglect, I did this about six months ago, and I found seven or eight cases of severe neglect that involved more than 20 horses. This is criminal neglect. These are cases that made TV reports. They made newspaper reports.
And then I found another 50 cases of less than 20 horses getting neglected. To me that seems like that (neglect) has increased.
WP:The Humane Society of the United States takes the position that horses cannot be slaughtered humanely. What’s your opinion on that?
TG:That I don’t agree with. Horses can be slaughtered humanely. But you’ve got to have good management and there are some bad videos of horses being slaughtered…. But let me tell you, there are three things you have to do to slaughter horses humanely.
Number one, a non-slip floor in your stun box.
Two, solid sides so the horse doesn’t see out into the plant.
Three, you’ve got to have two people, one to shoot and one to drive it in. Because what you want to do is drive the horse in, get the door shut, bang.
If you have one person doing it, that one person drives the horse in, the door shuts and by the time the person gets around to the front of the box to shoot the horse, the horse is starting to go crazy…. The plant in Eastern Canada, they had a cattle stun box and the horse is looking out over the top of the cattle stun box.
That’s just absurd. Add some solid panels. The horse shouldn’t be looking out into the plant. That’s just stupid.
WP:Have you been to that plant (near Montreal)?
TG:No. I haven’t been to that plant. I’ve only seen the videos. But the one in Alberta (Fort Macleod) I’ve been in three times.
WP:Are you hopeful that these plants will change and improve their practices?
TG:My feelings on slaughter houses is, and I don’t care what species it is, they should put a video camera in there and have it audited by an outside auditing company over the internet, like the way Cargill has done with their beef and pork plants…. I’m getting to the point where they should stream the video out to the internet and let everybody watch it, because it (horse slaughter) can be done humanely. But it’s going to take a management commitment.
