NM - Move to ban horse slaughter doesn’t make it

The latest attempt to ban horse slaughter in New Mexico effectively died in the Legislature on Monday. The House Committee on Agriculture, Water and Wildlife tabled three bills sponsored by Gail Chasey, D-Bernalillo, that would have prohibited the slaughter of horses for human consumption, granted horses protection under the state’s cruelty-to-animals law and required the Livestock Board to monitor horse exports at the Mexican border. Although no horse meat processing plant exists in New Mexico, litigation by the state Attorney General’s Office continues over a plant that had been proposed by Valley Meat Co. in Roswell. Last year, Valley Meat backed off its plan to process horse meat at a retrofitted cow processing plant and transferred the Roswell plant’s ownership to D’Allende Meats of Texas. The plant is now up for sale, according to attorney Blair Dunn. New Mexico shipped more than 19,000 horses to a border crossing with Mexico in 2013, up from about 8,500 horses five years prior, according to the latest statistics available from the Livestock Board. The state does not track exported horses’ final destination...more