San Francisco, CA — March 24, 2014 – Today, a coalition of animal and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the U.S. Forest Service from eliminating thousands of acres of protected territory and rounding up as much as 80% of the wild horses in the Devil’s Garden Wild Horse Territory in northeast California’s Modoc National Forest. Roundups mean herding horses into corrals using helicopters and separating them from their families — and frequently leads to their sale for slaughter in Mexico and Canada.

Critics of horse slaughter asked a lawmaker to give a bill a hearing that could lead to up or down votes on the facilities. Last year, lawmakers passed and Gov. Mary Fallin signed a measure to lift the state ban on horse slaughtering. However, federal funding for inspections has not been forthcoming, essentially putting such facilities on hold.

The Year of the Horse begins with a Win for America’s Horses!

On January 17, President Obama signed the 2014 budget bill which denies funding for USDA inspections of horse slaughter facilities, thereby reinstating the ban on horse slaughter in the U.S. Not only will this save approximately $5 million of our tax dollars, it echoes the sentiment of the majority of Americans who do not approve of the horse as a food commodity.