Sacia Pushes For ‘Humane’ Horse Slaughter

April 11th, 2008 at 11:40am Aaron Chambers

Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Pecatonica, has emerged this spring as perhaps the Legislature’s greatest proponent of re-opening a shuttered Illinois horse slaughter facility.

The DeKalb plan, known as Cavel, shut down last year.

The shutdown in September of the DeKalb Cavel plant, the nation’s last horse-slaughtering plant, ended an operation that at one point slaughtered 40,000 to 60,000 horses a year. The horsemeat was sold primarily for human consumption in overseas markets.

A series of lower-court decisions upheld a law signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in May that effectively ended the operation by banning the import, export, possession and slaughter of horses for human consumption in Illinois.

Cavel, which is based in Belgium, challenged the Illinois ban on constitutional grounds, claiming the law violated interstate and foreign commerce rules because the meat is shipped overseas. The plant had been in operation for about 20 years and had 60 employees.

The plant reopened for a time during the summer while court challenges were heard, but closed in late September, after the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Illinois law was similar to state bans on bullfights and cockfights meant to protect animal welfare.

Sacia worked this spring to re-open the facility. He said American farmers were shipping horses to Mexico, where workers brutally euthanize them by stabbing them repeatedly in the spinal cord. Killing a horse with a bolt to the head — the practice employed at Cavel — is far more humane, Sacia said.

“Rather than being humanely terminated with a bolt to the head, as they were in Cavel International in DeKalb, they are now stabbed with a spear into their spine while they are alive,” Sacia said on the House floor.

“A hook comes down, grabs a hind leg, pulls it into the air, and the animal’s throat is cut. And yet there are individuals who profess to love animals who now think it’s OK to send 40,000 (horses) a year into the country of Mexico. What a travesty.”

After introducing a bill pertaining to the humane transport of horses, Sacia amended his bill to repeal the state law that effectively shuttered Cavel. His bill synopsis:

Amends the Illinois Horse Meat Act to repeal a Section added by Public Act 95-2 that makes it unlawful to slaughter a horse if the meat is to be used for human consumption.

Once amended, his bill was defeated by a committee. Two members voted for it, five members voted against it and four members voted present. Opponents of horse slaughter were not moved by Sacia’s point that closing Cavel meant horses met a less humane death south of the border.

Meanwhile, Rep. JoAnn Osmond, R-Antioch, moved forward with her own version of a horse transport bill. Like Sacia’s initial plan, her bill would prohibit any person from transporting “any equidae in a vehicle or trailer containing 2 or more levels, one on top of the other.”

Osmond said her bill was in response to an accident last fall involving a tractor trailer jammed — on two decks — with 59 horses en route to an auction. The crash injured many of the horses, who were euthanized. Others went to a nearby farm.

Sacia opposed her bill, and spoke passionately against it. He said lawmakers must deal directly with the crux of the matter — horse slaughter.

“Just a year ago, ladies and gentlemen, you outlawed, this state outlawed, Cavel to slaughter horses in the state of Illinois,” Sacia said on the House floor.

“So, did that mean no more horses were killed? Absolutely not. We now stuff ‘em into trailers, send them thousands of miles into the great country of Mexico, where they are terminated and it is not a humane end of life.”

He continued, “When we had our plant in Illinois, we didn’t have to worry about double-decker horse transportation because they could be taken right down the road to Cavel.”

Sacia became a co-sponsor of Osmond’s bill on April 1. But the following day, he took his name off the bill. He told me he decided against co-sponsoring the bill when Osmond refused to accept an amendment offered by the Illinois Farm Bureau.

The draft amendment, which is here, would allow the transport of horses by double-decker trailer if the vehicle is “specifically designed for the transportation of equidae.”

“We don’t want to totally prevent the opportunity for double-decker transportation,” Sacia told me. The amendment he favored, he said, would give “future technology the opportunity to deal with this (transport) issue.”

Entry Filed under: Horse Slaughter, Jim Sacia