AN OLD saying "be careful what you wish for, you might get it" seems to be coming true in the US.

In 2007, intense lobbying by horse-loving welfare groups brought about the closure of horse slaughterhouses.

Horse slaughter has not taken place in the US since 2007, when the last facilities operating in Texas and Illinois closed after Congress stripped the US Department of Agriculture of funding for food safety inspections at slaughterhouses.

The USDA continued to do inspections on a fee-for-service basis until a federal judge ruled against the arrangement.

Since then, horses have been transported to Mexico and Canada for processing, causing them to endure long trips and, especially in the case of Mexico, inhumane handling.

In a report released on June 22, the Government Accountability Organisation said the number of horses exported to Mexico for processing rose 660 per cent from 2006 to 2010.

The number of horses exported to Canadian processing plants increased 148 per cent during the same time period.

The report said nearly as many US horses were trucked to Canada and Mexico for slaughter in 2010, nearly 138,000, as were slaughtered before domestic slaughter ceased.

So instead of saving them, those up for slaughter were still killed, but after a long truck trip and without the same supervision.

The plant closures also caused an 8-21 per cent decline in market prices for low and medium-priced horses, most likely to be brought to slaughter.

Equine welfare advocate Jerry Finch, president of Habitat for Horses, said that "every year we complete hundreds of investigations and touch the lives of thousands of horses".

"Since our main emphasis is the education of the owner, we are able to successfully complete most of those investigations," he said.

"When required, we assist law enforcement in taking the case through the court system and placing the horses in foster homes."

But a report from Fort Worth, Texas, said equine rescue groups statewide were being inundated with horses surrendered by owners who could not afford to feed them, or simply abandoned on back roads due to the horrific drought in that area to be picked up by rangers.

Cattle farmers have brought in truckloads of hay from other areas or shipped their breeding stock out, but the one million horses and 181,000 horse owners in Texas face an even worse problem because of the shrinking water supply and people can't even give horses away.

With no hay and dams and bores drying up, owners are trying to hand their horses to welfare groups, which are buckling under the numbers.

A Stephenville horse auction offered 763 in just one sale, with horse floats lined up for kilometres waiting to unload.

Many people who adopted horses found just how costly it was to try to maintain them in a severe drought and, if they decide to humanely destroy them, how expensive it was to have their horses put down and the bodies disposed of.

  • Fran Cleland is The Weekly Times horse writer