Maria Daines
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5/7/2006 9:11:58 PM
In memory of Ferdinand...
Hi all,
our song 'Set us Free' is dedicated to Kentucky Derby Winner Ferdinand. Please see the news update on the horse slaughter campaign here -
KENTUCKY DERBY DAY
From the Dallas Morning News -
Leading a horse to slaughter? Not here
Congressman uses Derby as forum to outlaw butchering
09:39 PM CDT on Thursday, May 4, 2006
Ed Whitfield recalled the other day being at what 20 years ago was one of the most exciting Kentucky Derbies. It was when legendary jockey Bill Shoemaker rode Ferdinand from an 18-1 long shot to Run for the Roses champion.
Shoemaker gamely shot Ferdinand through the pack. And when he got the horse to the top of the stretch, he found enough room to get to the front. There he stayed. Ferdinand won by 2 ½ lengths.
It was the beginning of one of the most exciting back-to-back campaigns in thoroughbred history, too.
For Ferdinand then went on to win the 1987 Breeders' Cup Classic in even more exciting fashion.
In the midst of stellar careers and battling for Horse of the Year, Ferdinand and Alysheba, that year's Kentucky Derby winner, hooked up inside the sixteenth pole and fought all the way to the wire.
And, once again, Shoemaker got Ferdinand to the finish line first. That time, by a nose.
It was the first time the Breeders' Cup produced Horse of the Year. Ferdinand was named older male of the year, too.
"Here on my desk, I have a plate commemorating it [Ferdinand's Derby win]," Whitfield, a Republican congressman from Kentucky, recalled the other day during a teleconference.
He was at his desk four years ago when a horseman walked in and asked: "Did you hear what happened to Ferdinand?"
The horseman informed Whitfield that Ferdinand wound up in Japan, slaughtered for food. The horse wasn't sick; he just wasn't successful at stud.
"I was shocked," Whitfield said.
He had no idea that horses from this country, where horsemeat is not sold for human consumption, were still winding up in slaughterhouses, here and abroad, to satisfy Asian and European palates.
Ever since, Whitfield has been fighting to get this country out of the business of chopping up horses, as iconic American figures as there are, for dinner plates.
It looked last fall as if Whitfield and the cadre of supporters of a ban on slaughtering horses in this country finally had won this battle that shouldn't even exist. After all, we don't eat horses. There is no reason for us to be supplying those who do. Most people are as appalled and sickened as Whitfield when they find out the act is going on.
But due to some slick lawyering, duplicitous organizations such as the American Quarter Horse Association and a few couldn't-care-less elected officials, especially in Texas, there are three horse butchering companies operating legally in the United States. Two of them are in Dallas-Fort Worth's back yard – Dallas Crown in Kaufman and Beltex in Fort Worth.
The three companies appeared to be rendered inoperative last fall when Congress cut off funding for U.S. Agriculture Department inspections of the plants. Without inspections, they wouldn't be allowed to produce.
But the plants said they would pay for the inspections and, unfortunately, the USDA said that would be OK, and a federal court agreed in March.
It was estimated that more than 91,000 horses were slaughtered last year in those three butchering plants, all of which are owned by the foreigners that eat horses. There is no more than a guess as to how many were racehorses, but some who are fighting the plants have suggested as much as 10 percent of the total killed were once entertaining track-goers and bettors.
Another star of the track we
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