01/05/2026
🛑 The bipartisan support of 221 members of Congress cosponsoring a bill to end horse slaughter will mean nothing without a vote.
America’s horses need your help:
Send a message urging your members to call for a vote on the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act by tapping Take Action in our bio or at: returntofreedom.salsalabs.org/safeact2025
Why it’s so important:
🔹 Since 2007, when the last domestic slaughter plant closed, Congress has supported language in annual funding bills keeping plants from opening inside the United States on a year-to-year basis.
But that has done nothing to stop a handful of kill buyers from buying horses at auction, then trucking them to Mexican or Canadian slaughterhouses.
🔹 Final stats aren’t yet available, but the number of American horses exported during 2025 was on pace to reach its highest total in at least four years.
Through November, at least 19,654 equines were shipped to slaughter in Mexico or Canada. That’s an 11.4% increase, year over year.
🔹 More than 80% of Americans oppose horse slaughter, according to polls, and both animal welfare and horse industry groups alike support a ban.
Congress has routinely passed funding bill language barring the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service from selling federally protected wild horses and burros to slaughter after capture — yet they still fall into the foreign slaughter pipeline after adoption or sale.
🔹 Kill buyers prey on healthy horses that could find new homes: More than 92% of exported horses are in “good” condition, according to a government study.
🔹 The entire process of shipping horses is cruel, subjecting animals to long and dangerous transportation and brutal treatment at slaughterhouses, culminating in ineffective stunning methods that can leave horses conscious during dismemberment.
🔹 A slaughter ban would protect human health. Because Americans don’t raise horses to be eaten, they are often given any of 375+ medications banned for human consumption by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration —some which can be lethal.
Photo: