Missouri House Passes Bill to Once Again Allow Slaughter

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/04/missouri-lawmakers-horse-slaughterhouse-mr-ed.html

It may be the Show-Me state but Missouri representatives apparently saw too much email from activist Brenda Shoss and the group Kinship Circle.

The animal activists were responsible for hundreds of emails, the Associated Press reports, that urged the lawmakers to vote against a bill that would pave the way for horse slaughterhouses to open in the state.

"The bill would seek to bypass the ban on using federal funds for horse meat inspection by allowing state officials to collect fees and pass them on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture," The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote. "There are no horse slaughter plants in the U.S., but the meat is considered a delicacy in some countries." Supporters of the bill claim that the meat would come from horses that were abused or neglected.

Because the activist emails were so plentiful and from all around the world it was hard for the representatives from either side of the aisle to determine how many were actually constituents. There was also the issue of weeding through the email, a process that took some reps hours, and made them feel vengeful toward the activists.

Some reps created rules in their email accounts that redirected any message with the word "horse" back at Shoss's email address. "It's so fun to piss you wackos off," Rep. Casey Guernsey (R-Bethany) wrote to an activist through a private email account. "You're lucky I even acknowledge your existence. It's so much fun to taunt people like you -- ha! Tell me, is it truly liberating to be so incredibly clueless?"

Shoss said that she got prank calls from people who made neighing sounds and she also received a phone call from someone who sang the theme song from the classic TV show, "Mr. Ed." To add insult to injury, the Mizzo House passed the slaughterhouse bill today.

For the next twelve years, I DON'T want to hear "only neglected horses are slaughtered." Use that thing in your head. Why would people WANT to only slaughter sick and skinny horses?? That meat wouldn't be good! The best meat would come from HEALTHY horses. *grinds teeth*