Agricultural animals; care by owner, penalty. (HB1541)

This bill, which loosens the regulations governing the care of both food animals and horses, has now passed the full committee. We need to make the full GA aware of the implications of this bill by lobbying our representatives. For horses in particular, it would mean that they would lose the option to be taken to a rescue and the obvious conclusion is an increase in the slaughter truck population. Once that happens then the calls for US equine slaughter houses (already showing up across a number of States) will be intensified. This is part of a concerted effort by pro horse slaughter advocates to shoe horn their agenda into as many legislative bills as possible. In VA they can conveniently attach themselves to the big Ag attacks on food animal care regulations as horses are included. In other States they are using bills on the relaxation of food sources to push horse meat production and, in yet another approach, to use the economy and high jobless rates to promote slaughter houses (which employ relatively few people, have little impact on the local economy, but make big profits for the private owners!).