OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma took a step toward allowing livestock owners to slaughter horses for food on Friday when the governor signed a bill that permits the practice, but processing plants must first be authorized by the federal government.

Governor Mary Fallin's action legalized the slaughter of horses so that their meat may be prepared and packaged for export. But slaughterhouses must get U.S. Department of Agriculture authorization, Fallin said.

The slaughter of horses for food had been illegal in Oklahoma since 1963 and was carried out only in Texas and Illinois until Congress stopped it in 2006. The congressional ban was lifted in 2011.

Fallin said horse slaughterhouses in Oklahoma would use more humane practices than those in Mexico because they would be inspected by federal authorities.

Horse meat was at the center of a scandal that erupted in Europe in January, when testing in Ireland revealed that some beef products also contained equine DNA.

The United States Humane Society and animal rights activists opposed the new law in Oklahoma, while livestock interests said the change preserves their private property rights and will benefit horse owners.

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YouTube

The above screen shot shows a video posted by horsehumane on YouTube. horsehumane reposted a video originally posted by Tim Sappington, which shows him fatally shooting a horse.

An employee of a southeastern New Mexico slaughterhouse has posted a video online showing him fatally shooting a horse in the head.

That has sparked outrage among animal activists and led to death-threat calls to the Roswell meat company, which is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get a horse slaughter plant in the area.

A maintenance contractor with Valley Meat Co. is shown in the video bringing a horse out of its pen, swearing at activists and then killing the horse with a single gunshot, KOB-TV reported Thursday.

Rick De Los Santos, a part-owner of Valley Meat Co., said he has been slammed with hate calls and death threats since the video hit the Internet.

"I didn't have anything to do with that video. That's the honest truth," De Los Santos said.

De Los Santos said the contract worker, Tim Sappington, shot the video on his own time and at his own home.

"He shot a horse. That's what he eats. It's not against the law to slaughter your own horse," De Los Santos said. "Now, putting it on YouTube, I would not have done that."

Last year, De Los Santos sued the USDA to resume the inspections necessary to open what would be the nation's first new horse slaughterhouse in more than five years.

The suit alleges USDA inaction on the company's application was driven by emotional political debates and has cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many animal humane groups and public officials were outraged at the idea of resuming domestic horse slaughter, including New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.

But others — including some horse rescuers, livestock associations and the American Quarter Horse Association — support a return to domestic horse slaughter.

They point to a 2011 report from the federal Government Accountability Office that shows horse abuse and abandonment have been increasing since Congress effectively banned horse slaughter by cutting funding for federal inspection programs in 2006. 

Gerry Broome / AP

Megan Chance and her son Alex visit with Burma. left, and Lulu in Washington, N.C., Jan. 31. Megan rode Burma as a child in New Jersey and planned to bring her to North Carolina where she was starting a new stables. But, after leaving her on a year breeding contract, Burma vanished. For years Megan searched in vain, eventually deciding her horse must be dead. Last summer, Burma was rescued from the "kill pen" at a New Jersey auction and test facility and the two were recently reunited.

Gerry Broome / AP

An old portrait of a young Burma is shown in the home of Megan Chance.

The mare was tall and spirited and a joy to behold, galloping across the pasture with her head high. Everyone thought Burma was a beauty — no one more than Megan Chance. For six years, she and the thoroughbred she received at 16 were inseparable. But after college, Chance needed to board her beloved horse while she went away for a few months. That proved a turning point in Burma's life, which then followed a twisting path from a breeder's barn to an equine medical lab and even to the "kill pen" at a horse auction, from which a Connecticut rescuer spared her just in time, then posted her picture online. "Oh my God, she's alive," exclaimed Chance when a friend sent her the photo. Last month, after years apart, they were reunited in North Carolina. And now, said Chance: "I intend to spoil her and love her and pamper her and watch her grow old."

-- Reported by the Associated Press

Read the full story here.

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Gerry Broome / AP

Megan Chance rides Burma for the first time since the two were reunited, Jan. 31.

Reuters reports from SAN ANTONIO:

The yearlong Texas drought is taking a heartbreaking toll on horses and donkeys, thousands of which have been abandoned by owners who can no longer afford the skyrocketing price of the hay needed to feed them.

Debbie Fincher / Safe Haven Equine Rescue via Reuters

An abandoned, malnourished horse is seen at the Safe Haven Equine Rescue in Gilmer, Texas, in this undated handout image obtained by Reuters on Dec. 3, 2011.

"We get 20 to 40 calls a week that horses are alongside the road and left; nobody's claimed them," Richard Fincher of Safe Haven Equine Rescue in Gilmer, in east Texas, told Reuters. "Sheriffs are calling us all the time."

Before this year, he would get more like three or four calls a week, he said.

The problem, according to Dennis Sigler, a horse specialist at Texas A&M University, is that the drought has dried up the hay fields, leaving horse owners having to pay double or triple the prices they are used to paying for hay, if they can find hay at all.

Horse abandonment is a crime, and state law requires abandoned horses to be held by the local sheriff's department for 18 days, Fincher said. After that, most are sold at a sale barn for whatever prices they can bring.

"People just can't afford to feed horses anymore," Fincher said. "They're too busy trying to feed themselves." Read the full story.

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