Equine Expert on HSUS Raid: Lots of Horsing Around

Amidst all of the chatter about our Academy Awards commercial, some important news came forward last week concerning an alleged case of horse cruelty at a Maryland farm.

Last April, the Queen Anne’s County Animal Control and HSUS conducted an allegedly warrantless seizure of 133 horses from Canterbury Farm. We heard a lot at the time to have us skeptical, but we wanted to see how it all played out. And now we have more information.

The law firm representing the defendant, Marsha Parkinson, announced last week that she had reached a deal whereby most of the charges would be immediately dropped and the rest of the charges struck pending a probation before judgment. (As we understand it, that means she pled “no contest,” and if she meets certain conditions during a probationary period, the remaining charges may be expunged.) Parkinson will get back more than 60 of her animals—clearly, something that wouldn’t have happened if she was some Michael Vick-esque abuser.

But even more interesting is that the defense recruited equine scientist Dr. Don Henneke to offer his opinion of the evidence collected during the seizure. “At the time of the seizure,” Henneke stated, “the horses in question were not being neglected and should not have been removed from the care of Ms. Parkinson.”

That’s in stark contrast to HSUS’s claim at the time of the seizure that “every horse on that property is suffering from some level of lack of care.” So what gives him the authority to make that conclusion?

Henneke developed the internationally used “Henneke Scale,” or Body Conditioning Scale (BCS), for horses. In contrast to HSUS’s claim that the horses were “neglected, starving” and that rescuers arrived “just in time,” Henneke determined that “the overall health of the horses appeared to be adequate.”

Henneke further determined that the horses were “exposed to unnecessary stress due to poor horsemanship on the part of the people conducting the seizure” and that the “evaluators appear to have little knowledge of the accurate application of the BCS.”

Ouch.

Finally, Henneke stated that after the seizure the animals “appear to have gone through a prolonged period of stress” and that the body conditions had not significantly increased in most of the horses after a few months.

So, in summary, a renowned equine scientist who developed a scale for measuring bodily health in horses was prepared to testify that the horses shouldn’t have been seized and that the rescue personnel were basically incompetent.

You can read his full statement here, and there are more details than we’re listing in this piece in the interest of space. But it certainly indicates that HSUS’s assertions were a little hyperbolic, to say the least.

An interesting side note: HSUS claims that three donors “help[ed] finance the operation.” But an interview with one of the assisting rescue groups indicates that they helped bear a lot of the post-seizure cost—$38,000, in one group’s case. What, HSUS couldn’t spare some of its $200,000,000 in assets?

This is yet another black mark on HSUS’s animal rescue program. While a great idea in theory, we have to wonder if it succumbs to biases or pressure to produce sensationalist press releases.

Consider the South Dakota case in which the search warrant was later thrown out. HSUS is now facing a federal lawsuit.

Then there’s the Denisa Malott case in Arkansas, which resulted in the seized horses allegedly being neglected. Malott later asked the FBI to investigate whether HSUS was in violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

And let’s not forget that two former members of HSUS’s rescue team spilled the beans on its faux badges and media tactics.

There’s a definite need for a national animal rescue team. We just have to wonder if HSUS is the best group to run it.

PETA and HSUS: Who’s Horsing Around?

There’s been a lot of press devoted recently to the possible (probable?) reinstatement of horse slaughter in the United States. As expected, HSUS made hay out of horse slaughter’s potential return—while, oddly, HSUS’s little sister in the animal rights movement, PETA, had a different take. Speaking to the Christian Science Monitor, PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk said:

It's quite an unpopular position we've taken. There was a rush to pass a bill that said you can't slaughter them anymore in the United States. But the reason we didn't support it, which sets us almost alone, is the amount of suffering that it created exceeded the amount of suffering it was designed to stop.

We hate to say it, but PETA is the voice of sanity here. (Is it out of place to mention that it’s not like PETA has a problem with animals being killed?) After the ban on domestic slaughter, horses were simply shipped to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered—a long distance to travel outside of the purview of USDA inspectors and US humane slaughter laws. Last year, the number of horses going to slaughter abroad totaled 138,000. In other words, it’s arguable that HSUS helped cause a decrease in animal welfare.

Meanwhile, horse abandonment has increased domestically. Recent research presented in the Journal of Animal Science found that 100,000 unwanted horses turn up every year, but the capacity of horse rescues is only 13,400 animals.

HSUS president Wayne Pacelle retorts that abandonment has increased because of economic circumstances. He has a point, but he doesn’t answer this one question: If slaughter is totally banned, where are all those horses to go?

Horse sanctuaries across the country are already filled to capacity. So, predictably, some animals have been left to die of starvation. Their owners can’t sell them and can’t afford the cost for a veterinarian to euthanize the animal.

Meanwhile, Pacelle’s response is normative: People shouldn’t own horses unless they can care for them. OK, sure. But who can predict an economic downturn? Welcome to reality, where things don’t always go as planned. (And it’s not like everybody has a six-figure salary and pension plan like Wayne Pacelle.)

To HSUS’s credit, it does operate a horse sanctuary out in Oregon called the Duchess Sanctuary, which holds 200 horses on 1,120 acres. But since we haven’t seen any ideas from HSUS as to what to do with 138,000 horses if all horse slaughter was banned, let us suggest that HSUS build a Duchess Sanctuary for all of them.

By our calculation, HSUS would need to build ranches exceeding 1,200 square miles in size to house all of these animals.

That would require a lot of hard work and a lot of money. Doable? Possibly. But HSUS would have to “pony up” in a major way.

Of course, it’d be far easier for HSUS to continue making hay out of the horse slaughter issue and raising money off of it. If HSUS is going to continue to oppose horse slaughter, hopefully it offers some practical solutions—for the horses.

At HSUS, Equine Welfare Is Horseplay

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report formally analyzing the state of horse welfare since 2007. That was the year the Humane Society of the United States succeeded in stopping domestic horse slaughter by lobbying Congress to cut off funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture horse-slaughter inspections. The GAO report isn’t pretty. In a nutshell, it concludes that HSUS’s big victory was a huge defeat for animal welfare.

HSUS, a political lobbying group unaffiliated with pet shelters, has long advocated for a ban on processing horse meat for human consumption. When the activist group succeeded in 2007, the objections of credible animal welfare experts like those at the American Veterinary Medical Association got short shrift.

The AVMA and other organizations opposed the ban because HSUS didn’t address what would happen to unwanted horses once slaughter was no longer an option. These experts predicted that the number of abandoned horses would dramatically increase. They were right.

A flood of horses has been unleashed upon the West. Meanwhile, many of these animals are trucked long distances to Canada and Mexico, where slaughter doesn’t require the USDA’s say-so. (And in Mexico, humane slaughter standards are anybody’s guess.)