EQUINE WELFARE PRESS CONFERENCE AND RALLY TO TAKE PLACE DURING OPENING DAY OF BLM ADVISORY BOARD MEETING
For immediate release
Oklahoma City (February 27, 2012) -- The Cloud Foundation, Respect4Horses and Wild Horse Freedom Federation will hold a special press conference, during the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Advisory Board meeting, focused on addressing the BLM’s mismanagement of America’s vanishing wild horses and burros; the BLM Slaughtergate debacle; the European horse meat scandal; and the status of Oklahoma bills for legalization of previously banned horse slaughter within their state.
Where:
Sheraton Oklahoma City, One North Broadway, Oklahoma City, OK
When:
Monday, March 4th, 2013 at 12 noon – 1 PM, Rally to follow.
Who:
The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board is currently comprised of many publicly avowed horse slaughter proponents, who at prior meetings and during other public venues, have stated that the “proper” way to manage wild horses is to send them to slaughter. Although BLM management denies any link to slaughter associations, recent investigations have revealed that one known slaughter trader (kill buyer) purchased over 1,700 wild horses and burros from the BLM and no longer knows where they are and yet another BLM long term holding contractor has been documented selling American wild horses to another known kill buyer.
“BLM simply cannot continue to run the train off the track,” explains Ginger Kathrens, whose involvement with wild horses goes back to 1994. “BLM needs to look at humane on the range management of wild horses and burros before it’s too late.”
America wants answers and the Equine Advocacy groups will be demanding both transparency and accountability during the press conference and the BLM board meeting.
Likewise, in the midst of the raging European horse meat scandal, through which it has become apparent that the horse slaughter industry has deceived consumers for years by disguising tainted equine flesh as beef, Oklahoma’s legislators are fast tracking several bills to legalize and invite that same predatory business back into the United States with full knowledge that the bulk of the BLM’s wild horse long term holding facilities are located within their state’s boundaries.
Coincidence?
“Not likely,” says R.T. Fitch, president of Wild Horse Freedom Federation.
“Over the past several years the BLM has been stacking the deck with pro-slaughter appointees to the Advisory Board,” says Fitch. “They are deliberately ripping large numbers of wild horses and burros off from their rightful land in an effort to create an artificial fiscal emergency with the only available relief valve will be to slaughter the horses. The plan of ‘management to extinction’ is apparent to even the least informed American layman.”
“The horse slaughter industry is ridden with fraud from the beginning to the barbaric end,” states Simone Netherlands from Respect4Horses. “They not only disguise the cruelty, the carcinogenic drugs, lie to former horse owners, to the American public and falsify documents, they simply disguise their entire end product!” Netherlands continues, “Horse welfare organizations have been wondering why the demand for horse meat seemed so high, but now we know, they simply have been disguising it as beef for years. We urge the USDA to start testing our own food supply here in America, there is no guarantee that the same thing has not happened here.”
Lisa Friday from the Cloud Foundation adds, “America’s wild horses are losing what they value most at the hands of the BLM: their freedom and their families. Now… potentially their lives.”
To date the BLM has stockpiled in excess of 50,000+ wild horses and burros in costly short and long term contracted holding while leaving only an estimated 20,000 on their Congressionally designated rightful land.
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Contacts:
Respect4Horses (R4H) is a horse welfare organization whose goals include providing information and documentation to educate the public, the media and legislators in order to promote changes in legislation in regards to current horse welfare issues such as horse slaughter and the roundups of our last remaining wild horses and burros. www.respect4horses.com
Wild Horse Freedom Federation (WHFF) is a registered, Texas non-profit corporation with federal 501(c)(3) status. WHFF puts people between America’s wild equids and extinction through targeted litigation against governmental agencies whose documented agendas include the eradication of wild horse and burros from public, federal and state lands. www.wildhorsefreedomfederation.org
The Cloud Foundation (TCF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of wild horses and burros on our western public lands with a focus on Cloud's herd in the Arrowhead Mountains of Montana. www.thecloudfoundation.org