Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

I am getting so sick of beating this dead horse - pun intended.

Since our Nov. 25 issue when we ran our first letter regarding horse slaughter, we have had at least one letter per issue on the subject.

Well, we are starting out the new year with zero horse slaughter letters to the editor.

Reason being, we have had only two letters from readers in our area. Of the nine letters we’ve printed in the paper and four comments we’ve received on the Web site, only two of them came from the Tri-State Neighbor region.

Two letters came from Illinois, two from Arizona and one each from Kentucky, California and Virginia. From our four Web site comments, only one was labeled with a state and that one came from Florida.

So, from now on with this subject, we will only be printing letters from legitimate readers from the four states Tri-State Neighbor covers. People from out of this region can feel free to write to me, but those letters will not be printed in the paper nor on the Web site.

My reasons behind this stoppage come from nasty statements made in some of these letters regarding people and the fact that most people up in arms about this issue do not come from this part of the country.

My least favorite comment that has been made refers to horse slaughter as the “murder” of horses. To me, murder is not a word that refers to the slaughtering of horses or any other animal. Murder refers to killing a human being and usually involves premeditation with the intent to physically harm.

I know many of our letter writers would argue this point. To me, that means they should all be vegetarians if they can’t stand the thought of animals going to a slaughterhouse. Do you realize what happens when animals go to a packing plant? They are stunned unconscious and then continue on through the slaughter process, which happens to be USDA’s way of humane slaughter. Workers are not running around shooting animals.

Another reason is attacks on letter writers who want to keep horse slaughter. On many of our Web site comments, people that responded to our last South Dakota writer were very upset that he did not believe the same way that they did. I am not running those comments here nor on the Web site.

Another reason is the lack of proof behind claims made in many of these letters. In many of the letters, the writers dwell on the matter of horse theft and that many horses going to slaughter are stolen. Can someone please give me some hard proof on this? Not one of the letter writers said that they had a horse stolen and sold to a slaughter facility. They had only heard of it happening.

Another claim made is that the slaughter is not humane and not quick. Again, how many of the letter writers have actually been in one of these places? I haven’t been in a horse plant, but I’ve been in lamb, pork and beef plants and they have all been humane and quick.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to us on horse slaughter. We appreciated the letters, but the time has come to end this lopsided debate from writers in other parts of the country.

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