ABC News, Associated Press,JERI CLAUSING, April 23
Rick De Los Santos
About five miles from this southeastern New Mexico town?s famed UFO museum, tucked between dairy farms, is a nondescript metal building that could be home to any number of small agricultural businesses.
But Valley Meat Co. is no longer just another agricultural business. It?s a former cattle slaughterhouse whose kill floor has been redesigned for horses to be led in one at a time, secured in a huge metal chute, shot in the head, then processed into meat for shipment overseas.
It?s also ground zero for an emotional, national debate over a return to domestic horse slaughter that has divided horse rescue and animal humane groups, ranchers, politicians and Indian tribes.
At issue is whether horses are livestock or pets, and whether it is more humane to slaughter them domestically than to ship tens of thousands of neglected, unwanted and wild horses thousands of miles to be slaughtered in Mexico or Canada.
Front and center of the debate is Rick De Los Santos, who along with his wife, Sarah, has for more than two decades worked this small slaughterhouse, taking in mostly cows that were too old or sick to travel with larger herds to the bigger slaughterhouses for production.
Now, with cattle herds shrinking amid an ongoing drought, De Los Santos says he and his wife are just trying to transform their business and make enough money to retire by slaughtering domestically some of the thousands of horses that he says travel through the state every month on their way to what are oftentimes less humane and less regulated plants south of the border.
?They are being slaughtered anyway. We thought, well, we will slaughter them here and provide jobs for the economy,? De Los Santos said.
Instead, Valley Meat has been ensnarled in a yearlong political drama that has left the plant idle and its owners the target of vandalism and death threats ? warnings that increased after humane groups found a video a now-former plant worker posted of himself cursing at animal activists, then shooting one of his own horses to eat.
?People are saying, ?We will slit your throat in your sleep. We hope you die. We hope your kids die,?? De Los Santos said. ?Sometimes it?s scary. ? And it?s all for a horse.?
Indeed, voice mails left on the company?s answering machine spew hate and wishes for violence upon the family.
?I hope you burn in hell,? said one irate woman who called repeatedly, saying, ?You better pack your (expletive) bags (expletive) and get out of there because that place is finished.?
The couple have hired security and turned over phone records to federal authorities. They are, nevertheless, surprisingly candid about their plans, offering media access to the 7,200-square-foot slaughterhouse with one kill floor and two processing rooms that De Los Santos says can process 50 to 100 horses a day.
?It?s complicated, this industry of feeding the world,? Sarah De Los Santos says matter-of-factly. The meat would be processed for human consumption and exported to countries in eastern Europe and Asia.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is scheduled to inspect the facility to decide whether it can become the first plant in the country to slaughter horses in more than six years.
De Los Santos says he is not worried about passing the inspection. The plant passed one last year but then was told it couldn?t begin operations until the USDA developed an acceptable test to measure the horse meat for drug residue.
CONTINUED ? READ MORE at ABC News.com
Source: http://www.habitatforhorses.org/nm-slaughterhouse-ground-zero-in-horse-debate/
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