Please take notice of these four individuals because they are among the biggest enemies of wild and domestic equines serving in our government today either directly or indirectly.
Horse Slaughter Hall of Shame
Top left: Oilman and rancher Forrest Lucas.
He founded the pro-horse slaughter, pro-puppy mill and anti-animal lobbying group, Protect the Harvest. Lucas serves on Drumpf’s Agricultural Advisory Board and reportedly was given the task of helping to set the agricultural policy for this administration.
Lucas said publicly that horse slaughter needs to return to this country.
Top right: Brian Klipenstein, Exec Director at Protect the Harvest.
Klipenstein has been embedded at the USDA and is also rabidly in favor or horse slaughter and other forms of animal exploitation as clearly documented on the Protect the Harvest website.
Klipenstein started showing up at the USDA offices “volunteering” to help and soon got himself anointed into the Drumpf Administration’s USDA Transition team. Soon after, on February 3rd, public records of animal abusers were removed from the USDA website.
Bottom left: Newly-confirmed Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue.
Under his “supervision,” and his consent, information about animal welfare and violators of the Animal Protection Act and Horse Protection Act has been purged from the USDA website.
Lyndon Johnson signed the Animal Welfare Act into law in 1966. Every administration since then has made information about those individuals and businesses cited/convicted of animal cruelty readily available to the public…until now!
Consequently, puppy mill operators and those who engage in horse soring and other sadistic acts, will not be exposed and reported to the public, as Perdue has decided to protect these criminals. Perdue is also a big horse slaughter supporter.
Bottom right: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
“Stinky” Zinke may prove to be the worst Interior Secretary of all time. He has famously said, “if a horse is too old to breed, too old to ride or too expensive to feed, a horse is disposed of.” Right now, he is urging Congress to allow him to sell captured BLM wild horses and burros to slaughter.
What to do?
Make three phone calls. Call your elected rep in the House of Representatives and also call your two U.S. Senators. Tell them to reject provisions in the new 2018 budget to fund horse meat inspectors or any attempt to return horse slaughter to U.S. soil and to reject the sale of any captured wild horses and burros to anyone who wants them – which means slaughter.
There were always horse slaughter proponents in our government, but never like now. What we have now is a bunch of animal abusers all following the same dangerous and destructive paths that lead to horse slaughter. They must be stopped.