Obama, Congress restore horse-slaughter industry:
President Obama last month quietly signed into law a spending bill that restores the American horse-slaughter industry, just a few months after a government investigation said the ban on slaughtering was backfiring.
The domestic ban didn’t end horse slaughter but instead shifted the site of butchery to Mexico and Canada – which meant increased abuse or neglect as the horses were shipped out of the country and beyond the reach of U.S. law.
The ban had been imposed in 2006 when Congress defunded the government’s ability to inspect plants that butchered horses for consumption. Without inspections, the meat couldn’t be sold, and the industry withered.
But the Agriculture spending bill Mr. Obama signed the week before Thanksgiving dropped the prohibition on inspections, and the administration said it now stands ready to conduct them should anyone open a horse-slaughter plant.
Congress is in the pockets of Big Horsemeat!
Actually, not so much. On the whole, I don’t see why horses differ from other livestock that prompted this ban except some people like horses as more than an animal.
But Congress managed to restore a freedom opposed by PETA and the HSUS through and signed by the President. A bit of how it really happened:
This year, the House version of the Agriculture spending bill maintained the slaughter-ban language, but the Senate did not. When the two chambers reconciled their bills, the language was not in the final version.
Mr. Obama signed the spending bill by autopen on Nov. 18. He was traveling in Asia at the time the bill was presented to him, so he used the automated signature machine for the second time in his presidency.
Make no mistake: this restoration of freedom was not brought to you by the Republican-controlled House, but by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Cynically, one could posit that the Republicans in the House are not that eager to start restoring freedoms and overturning bans, whether they’re esoteric issues like slaughtering horses or more everyday-life-affecting decisions to compel usage of little glass mercury bombs throughout your home. Maybe that’s a good question for your Republican Congressman if you have one.
(Link to the Washington Times story seen on Instapundit.)
