Government to kill horses

Also, horse meat shouldn't be illegal.

No, there are not farmers that want those horses. Those are wild horses. They are not domesticated. Most wild animals, if captured, will themselves to die in a matter of hours or days, that is unless they don't kill you first and escape. They would never be able to ride them or let children be around them.

Please don't be all AWW POOR PONIES, because you really have no understanding of the issue. Farmers aren't in the business of keeping animals as pets, and horses are expensive to keep. A post I made about this very topic not too long ago:

Consider this: In California a few years ago, it was outlawed to use horses in dog and cat food. Now, as far as I know, no one was breeding horses for pet food, mostly because horse breeding is so expensive that to do so wouldn't be cost effective. They were mostly older and/or retired horses that were destined to be put down.

As someone with a rural background, I know from personal experience that horses are no longer a viable livestock animal since the tractor became a mainstream piece of equipment after WWII. Horses nowadays are mostly kept as pets and as show pieces, like pedigreed dogs. They have no real practical agricultural value.

Now, I was raised--although I'm sure some people would call it imbued with propaganda--with the notion that if someone no longer has value to you, you should dispose of it. Someone would call that cruel; in a country with limited agricultural land, and a lot of old horses with no place to put them, I call selling them to dog food factories practical. I was raised to put little sentimental value in animals. You, Trevor, may call that living up to my primitive upbringing. I think that if there weren't a lot of people like me, you'd sure have a fun time learning how to slaughter your own animals and get your own eggs.

Don't pull your logic on us! They are poor little ponies, end of story!

I guess my qualm is that government is doing it, the faceless monster. If it was a private landowner, I could be like, 'hey, private prop, not my biz...'

The government shouldn't overburden the taxpayers with unnecessary sentimentality about animals.

They should sell them for dog food.

Jane, your avatar is making me hungry!

So private landowners shooting wild horses = okay; government hiring people to shoot wild horses to help private land owners = bad.

I believe horses are more important than Americans. Badgers beat the British. Weasels win over the Welsh. Gerbils not Germans! Armadillos not Armenians! Chihuahuas not Chinese! Tigers not Thais! Zebras not the people of Zaire! Panthers not Pakistanis! Elephants not Ecuadorians! Mongooses not Mexicans! Dogs not Danes! Spaniels not Spaniars! Antelope not Austrians! Leopards not Luxembourgers! Iguanas not Italians! Canaries not Canadians! Parrots not Peruvians! etc.

Anyone catch the part about the horse program's $39 million budget? Aren't you glad your tax dollars are going for horsey management?

I agree with Mirka about the dog food. Why not let private enterprise use the horses for dog food? Free range dog food sounds good to me.

It's the fact that my money is being used to do it. If my money's not involved, whatever they do, the blood isn't on my hands. Jane is right in that this is probably a necessary thing to do, but since there is some level of morality involved, the fact that the decision is being made by men with guns I find more immorality on top of the killing of poor ponies. I guess this was my subconscious way of leading it back to the gun in the room.

American bureaucrats, yeah.

How weird is it that I assumed you were Canadian until just last week.

I guess a responsibly handled cull could be an option if the animals are starving because of their excess numbers. But if the main point here is that they're putting these animals down because farmers want the "open range" for their own livestock, that's just fucked. The whole idea definitely seems questionable. I'm surprised to see all of you lining up behind it.

I don't care one way or another. Let's round up the excess horses and ship them to some country that would like wild horses running around.

bad FAG

How about we ship 'em all to Cuba.

So you'd rather have pretty wild animals to look at than food to eat? Have fun with that...

garcg-vom

Without canadians, who will you send into the mines to make sure that it's safe for the Canaries? Think aboot that why don'cha...

I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.

I was just going over some papers, ahh...you know, papers...my papers, uhhh...business papers.

I'd love to get me some wild equine estrogen, that shit has got to be FIERCE!!!

and smelly, like premarin.

I'm also pretty sure that as the population grows exponentially, especially in states like California and Nevada (this is happening in Reno, which is right on the border between the two) and people demand more and more that all the food they eat be grown in conditions that swallow up addition resources (like free ranging) that we really have to start making difficult choices about where the land is going to start going. Into your mouth, or into wild horse preservation? The grass that feeds a few thousand ponies would also feed a few thousand cattle. Are you going to be the guy that personally tightens his belt and eats less beef next year in order to expand preservation ground?

i ate a thing

Was it a wild horse?

People have a romantic view of wild horses. Not helping is the fact that wild horses are mentioned in popular and well known Rolling Stones and U2 songs. So a lot of people want to protect them...probably getting teary eyed about it as they eat their chicken subs.

I just saw one of those PETA shock videos earlier this evening, where workers were outright abusing Turkeys (the turkeys were stomped, kicked, punched, and worse) and to me, those are the sorts of things that really put things in perspective. If a wild horse is killed a painless death (with one of those bolt guns you saw in No Country for Old Men) then I'd be fine having horses die all day long.

From what I've read, the people who work in factory farms get desensitized pretty quickly to animal's pain, they sort of have to to do their job, so it's sort of a recipe for disaster in the first place. It's like the Stanford Prison Experiment, where you put people in certain circumstances, and they're going to act a certain way. Imagine spending all day killing turkeys. It's not such a stretch any longer to start torturing them. One guy got scratched by a turkey and lost his temper and took a broom and forced it into the turkey.

I sweat premarin...

horses are gross

houses r gross

They shoot horses, don't they?

People are the ultimate spectacle.

And the most dangerous game!

That song was in Silence of the Lambs, yes?

Yes, and also Clerks II.