Post by NanciK on Apr 11, 2007 9:36:33 GMT -5
Hi Folks,
This topic has suddenly become very hot. Over the past week various folks from different groups have written me and asked me to weigh in. Rather than do that piecemeal, I am going to tell the whole story.
The fact is that the "unwanted horse" theory has been the flag ship argument of the slaughter industry as long as I have been involved in this. After all, we all know how much work it is to rescue a few horses, and if we think of 100,000 more a year it does sound impossible. Furthermore, we all know there are unwanted horses that desperately need homes. To educate myself I looked for a study of the relationship that would prove what the slaughter industry was saying. I surmised that there are many universities like Texas A & M (which gets $2 for every horse slaughtered in Texas) that would like to prove this theory. Yet there was not a single published paper that proved this relationship. True, many researchers have given their opinions, but none used any statistical evidence to prove it. Why I wondered?
Then Goodlatte claimed to have proof at the famous Lexington meeting two years ago. He said that Illinois Department of Agriculture statistics showed that abuse had doubled in the three years after Cavel burned. I asked for the figures and got a curt email with the numbers and a note saying that it was irrefutable that abuse had doubled in the three years after the plant burned in 2000. I wrote back with a link to a news story showing that the plant was in operation during this entire time and did not burn until Easter Sunday 2002. The next year abuse and neglect cases actually dropped! When I next saw Goodlatte I asked him if he had changed his mind. He said "No, I just disagree with your interpretation of the statistics." I pointed out that I had not interpreted anything but just shown his "irrefutable evidence" was that slaughter had not been related to the increase in abuse and neglect cases.
Being an engineer, I decided that I should use Excel to determine if there was indeed any relationship between these factors. I used the ILDA and USDA statistics for the time period surrounding the burning of Cavel. The results are my white paper:
www.horse- protection. org/pdf/Relation ship-of-Abuse- to-Slaughter. pdf
I have repeatedly invited the slaughter factions to review my paper but they have never responded. The fact is, as Goodlatte so succinctly put it, "irrefutable" that there is no consistent relationship between the rate of slaughter and the number of cases of abuse and neglect, and that on average the statistics show that more slaughter causes more cases of abuse and neglect. How can this be? Why is the theory that slaughter relieves abuse and neglect not borne out by 15 years of statically evidence? Here are just some of the reasons:
1) The theory assumes that the number of "unwanted" horses being bred is a constant. It is obviously not. Supply always interacts with demand. You cannot "kill off" the "unwanted horses", the breeders will just adjust the inexhaustible supply. I won't go into all the different sources of these horses as that is a big story in itself.
2) It assumes that the horses being slaughtered are "unusable". They are not. The Grandin Study showed that fewer than 6% of horses slaughtered are old, disabled, or ill-tempered. I think most of us would agree that this is a smaller number than found in the average horse population! The reasons are many. For one the slaughter industry does not want skinny or old horses, and transport regulations provide fines for transporting blind horses or severely lame horses to slaughter.
3) It assumes that the kill buyers, feed lots, and slaughter auctions do not abuse and neglect their horses, or that somehow this is acceptable if they eventually kill them. Consider just the two incidents this year where the horses in two kill trucks were filmed by the press. One of the trucks had been reported by a tire repair person who saw badly mauled (apparently beaten) horses in the trailer, and the other was exposed when it overturned and spewed horses over the interstate. This was just one glimpse into what these poor horses have suffered. I have investigated two other examples and the conditions were both similarly deplorable.
So, the slaughter industry ignores the evidence because it does not agree with their excuse for existence, but they still need to push this argument. So how to do that? What better way than to get an ally that would appear to be arms length like the AVMA, and have them promote the myth. And how better to promote it than starting an "unwanted horse" summit, and then have a lot of pro-slaughter people present various papers about how bad the problem is. These papers all start with "Every year 100,000 unwanted horses are slaughtered in this country." Then it goes on to say blah blah blah, tragedy, blah blah blah sad, blah blah blah. The point is that the message is buried in the first sentence and is almost never the direct subject of the paper. The message is that slaughtered horses are "unwanted" and unusable.
This subliminal technique is a tried and true method of persuasion used by marketers world wide. You have all seen it used to promote unknown hacks and bogus products. Late night paid advertising often claims "Now you can own the entire collection of songs by Melvin Bellygrowler, widely regarded as England's most sensational solo singer". This is the same technique being used by these "unwanted horse" people.
The AVMA summit was nothing but a subliminal attempt to convince us of a relationship that does not in reality exist. There certainly is a problem with unwanted horses, but slaughter does not address it. At the first meeting, a good number of rescues and anti-slaughter people attended. By the second meeting they had all figured out the game and abandoned the program. The AVMA was stuck with nothing but representatives of the slaughter industry and so they passed it off to the AHC. The AHC and the state councils are of course heavily influenced by the farm bureaus and almost all of them (except the national itself) have taken a proslaughter stand.
Unfortunately, the owners of the new "unwanted horse" site has apparently subscribed to the unwanted horse theory because one of the first lines on their site talks about the number of unwanted horses being slaughtered. I wrote and sent my paper, but they were not convinced. I know people believe what they want to believe and what I have said will not change the mind of every person. If young men in the Iraq can believe God will give them 70 virgins for killing a school full of kids, what hope do I have of convincing every person based on nothing but silly statistical and historical evidence? I just hope most of you will not fall for this underhanded campaign.
Best Regards,
John Holland
This topic has suddenly become very hot. Over the past week various folks from different groups have written me and asked me to weigh in. Rather than do that piecemeal, I am going to tell the whole story.
The fact is that the "unwanted horse" theory has been the flag ship argument of the slaughter industry as long as I have been involved in this. After all, we all know how much work it is to rescue a few horses, and if we think of 100,000 more a year it does sound impossible. Furthermore, we all know there are unwanted horses that desperately need homes. To educate myself I looked for a study of the relationship that would prove what the slaughter industry was saying. I surmised that there are many universities like Texas A & M (which gets $2 for every horse slaughtered in Texas) that would like to prove this theory. Yet there was not a single published paper that proved this relationship. True, many researchers have given their opinions, but none used any statistical evidence to prove it. Why I wondered?
Then Goodlatte claimed to have proof at the famous Lexington meeting two years ago. He said that Illinois Department of Agriculture statistics showed that abuse had doubled in the three years after Cavel burned. I asked for the figures and got a curt email with the numbers and a note saying that it was irrefutable that abuse had doubled in the three years after the plant burned in 2000. I wrote back with a link to a news story showing that the plant was in operation during this entire time and did not burn until Easter Sunday 2002. The next year abuse and neglect cases actually dropped! When I next saw Goodlatte I asked him if he had changed his mind. He said "No, I just disagree with your interpretation of the statistics." I pointed out that I had not interpreted anything but just shown his "irrefutable evidence" was that slaughter had not been related to the increase in abuse and neglect cases.
Being an engineer, I decided that I should use Excel to determine if there was indeed any relationship between these factors. I used the ILDA and USDA statistics for the time period surrounding the burning of Cavel. The results are my white paper:
www.horse- protection. org/pdf/Relation ship-of-Abuse- to-Slaughter. pdf
I have repeatedly invited the slaughter factions to review my paper but they have never responded. The fact is, as Goodlatte so succinctly put it, "irrefutable" that there is no consistent relationship between the rate of slaughter and the number of cases of abuse and neglect, and that on average the statistics show that more slaughter causes more cases of abuse and neglect. How can this be? Why is the theory that slaughter relieves abuse and neglect not borne out by 15 years of statically evidence? Here are just some of the reasons:
1) The theory assumes that the number of "unwanted" horses being bred is a constant. It is obviously not. Supply always interacts with demand. You cannot "kill off" the "unwanted horses", the breeders will just adjust the inexhaustible supply. I won't go into all the different sources of these horses as that is a big story in itself.
2) It assumes that the horses being slaughtered are "unusable". They are not. The Grandin Study showed that fewer than 6% of horses slaughtered are old, disabled, or ill-tempered. I think most of us would agree that this is a smaller number than found in the average horse population! The reasons are many. For one the slaughter industry does not want skinny or old horses, and transport regulations provide fines for transporting blind horses or severely lame horses to slaughter.
3) It assumes that the kill buyers, feed lots, and slaughter auctions do not abuse and neglect their horses, or that somehow this is acceptable if they eventually kill them. Consider just the two incidents this year where the horses in two kill trucks were filmed by the press. One of the trucks had been reported by a tire repair person who saw badly mauled (apparently beaten) horses in the trailer, and the other was exposed when it overturned and spewed horses over the interstate. This was just one glimpse into what these poor horses have suffered. I have investigated two other examples and the conditions were both similarly deplorable.
So, the slaughter industry ignores the evidence because it does not agree with their excuse for existence, but they still need to push this argument. So how to do that? What better way than to get an ally that would appear to be arms length like the AVMA, and have them promote the myth. And how better to promote it than starting an "unwanted horse" summit, and then have a lot of pro-slaughter people present various papers about how bad the problem is. These papers all start with "Every year 100,000 unwanted horses are slaughtered in this country." Then it goes on to say blah blah blah, tragedy, blah blah blah sad, blah blah blah. The point is that the message is buried in the first sentence and is almost never the direct subject of the paper. The message is that slaughtered horses are "unwanted" and unusable.
This subliminal technique is a tried and true method of persuasion used by marketers world wide. You have all seen it used to promote unknown hacks and bogus products. Late night paid advertising often claims "Now you can own the entire collection of songs by Melvin Bellygrowler, widely regarded as England's most sensational solo singer". This is the same technique being used by these "unwanted horse" people.
The AVMA summit was nothing but a subliminal attempt to convince us of a relationship that does not in reality exist. There certainly is a problem with unwanted horses, but slaughter does not address it. At the first meeting, a good number of rescues and anti-slaughter people attended. By the second meeting they had all figured out the game and abandoned the program. The AVMA was stuck with nothing but representatives of the slaughter industry and so they passed it off to the AHC. The AHC and the state councils are of course heavily influenced by the farm bureaus and almost all of them (except the national itself) have taken a proslaughter stand.
Unfortunately, the owners of the new "unwanted horse" site has apparently subscribed to the unwanted horse theory because one of the first lines on their site talks about the number of unwanted horses being slaughtered. I wrote and sent my paper, but they were not convinced. I know people believe what they want to believe and what I have said will not change the mind of every person. If young men in the Iraq can believe God will give them 70 virgins for killing a school full of kids, what hope do I have of convincing every person based on nothing but silly statistical and historical evidence? I just hope most of you will not fall for this underhanded campaign.
Best Regards,
John Holland
