WASHINGTON – A battle over Black Beauty that pits agriculture against animal protection is on the menu in Congress this year.

Horsemeat may not tickle American taste buds, but it’s enough of a delicacy in Europe and Japan to keep three foreign-owned slaughterhouses in Illinois and Texas busy with exports. In 2005, the plants slaughtered more than 94,000 U.S. horses.

Legislation pending before Congress would shut them down by banning horse slaughter in the United States for human consumption. A coalition of horse groups, animal-rights activists and entertainers like Toby Keith and Ashley Judd are lobbying for its passage. Groups including Ohio’s Farm Bureau oppose it.

Texas oil magnate T. Boone Pickens told a congressional subcommittee last year that the 2003 death of 1986 Kentucky Derby winner Ferdinand in a Japanese slaughterhouse galvanized a movement to close U.S. plants. He said the plants, which boast they can take a horse “from stable to table in four days,” provide a dumping ground for stolen horses.

“The horse has a special place in American culture and history,” Pickens said. “It helped settle this country and provided inspiration for the horsepower that now powers the vehicles that make this nation go.”

Opponents of the bill include Ohio’s Farm Bureau, whose members visited Washington recently to lobby Congress on the issue. They argued that the legislation injects politics into food policy and could have broader implications for the U.S. livestock industry.

“This bill would essentially ban a practice that eliminates an opportunity for the humane end of life for an animal,” said Adam Sharp, the farm bureau’s national-affairs director. “What else are you supposed to do with these animals nobody wants?”

Sharp said it’s hard to find facilities that will take in old horses or dispose of horse carcasses and that burial or incineration of dead horses “gets tricky and pricey.”

Joe Porach, who operates Starlite Stables in Berea, Ohio, notes the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has opposed prior versions of the bill, monitors slaughterhouse treatment of horses.

“There is a need for the slaughter of horses, and to do away with that is unacceptable, in my opinion,” said Porach, who is vice president of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Farm Bureau.

Phil Greenisen, who raises Haflinger horses in Salem, Ohio, was among those lobbying against the bill in Washington. He says the slaughter market establishes a minimum baseline price for horses that would fall by about $350 apiece if it were eliminated.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of young horses in Ohio that are bought and sold for a few hundred dollars,” said Greenisen. “If this legislation went into effect, it could mean that my babies would have no value.”

The bill passed the House last September in a 263-146 vote but wasn’t considered by the Senate. Rep. John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who was vice chairman of the House Agriculture Committee before becoming House minority leader, said it would extend government regulations too far.

“I do not wish to see any animal unnecessarily harmed,” said Boehner. “However, I do not believe that this legislation is the right way to protect livestock while ensuring humane ways to dispose of sick and injured animals.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the Cleveland Democrat, spoke in favor of the bill on the House floor. He said horses sold for slaughter are “often transported in overcrowded trucks, deprived of food and water, exposed to the elements and made to stand in their own waste.”

Congress isn’t the only entity contemplating a crackdown on horse slaughter. Last week, a federal appeals court determined slaughterhouses in Texas must comply with a 1949 state law that bars the sale of horse meat for human consumption. The two Texas slaughterhouses are weighing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Legislators in Illinois, where the remaining slaughterhouse is located, recently introduced a bill that would ban horse slaughter for human consumption.

“The forces are closing in on this industry on the state and federal level,” said Nancy Perry, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, a nonprofit advocacy group. She calls passage of the federal bill “inevitable,” adding, “Most Americans don’t know this goes on and people who find out are just shocked.”

Perry said owners of unwanted horses can have them humanely euthanized by a veterinarian. She said some jurisdictions allow dead horses to be buried on their owners’ property, and other horse owners give the carcasses to rendering companies that melt down the bodies and process them into saleable commodities, like cosmetics and fertilizer.

CM END EATON

(Sabrina Eaton is a staff writer in the Washington bureau of The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at seaton(at)plaind.com.)

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