Horse advocate Ewing testifies for slaughter

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2004:

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois–Donna Ewing, 69,
founder of the Hooved Animal Humane Society in
1971 and the rival Hooved Animal Rescue &
Protection Society in 2001, recently testified
to an executive committee hearing of the Illinois
House of Representatives that horse slaughter for
meat should not be banned.
“Humane societies became involved with
wild horses and stopped ranchers from killing or
culling the wild horses, and the consequence has
been that animals have been kept in concentration
camps at tremendous expense… billions of
dollars, because the humane people said you
cannot kill our wild horses,” Ewing said. “They
need to be controlled to a certain degreeŠIf we
don’t have a place where these animals, the
unwanted horses, the old horses, the sick …
well, they can’t take the sick ones for human
consumption ŠThere’s going to be a glut on the
market. People will be turning their animals
loose and I will be finding dying, starving
horses more than I have been now.

“I urge you to vote no on this bill,”
Ewing continued. “We are the stewards of these
animals. It is our obligation to take care of
them and to see to it that they have a dignified
exit. And the slaughterhouse, which I have
visited and went outside and regurgitated, was
extremely difficult for me to see, but it’s a
reality of life that we cannot bury 200,000
[horses]. Burning them, we’re going to
contaminate the air. Something must be done,
and to use poison to euthanize these animals and
to waste that protein when we have cats and dogs,
and we have the animals in the zoos–this meat
should be used.”
Of opponents of horse slaughter, Ewing
said, “The first thing they are going to do is
say we cannot eat beef, we can’t eat turkey, we
can’t eat anything. And I don’t think it is up
to us to legislate what people can eat.”
Delivered on November 18, 2003, the
taped testimony was obtained and disclosed by
SHARK on January 23, 2004. SHARK has repeatedly
clashed with Ewing over her public defenses of
rodeo.
Ewing and her daughter Ronda were fired
as executive director and horse trainer/office
assistant of the Hooved Animal Humane Society in
June 2001, following prolonged friction with the
board of directors over alleged mismanagement and
failure to designate a successor.
Ewing in April 2001 had filed two
lawsuits against the board, after the board
accused her of taking member and donor lists in
order to start a competing organization.