Proponents and opponents of horse slaughter don’t agree on much these days, but there’s one thing they have in common: There is consensus that transporting horses stacked on top of each other crammed into double-decker trailers is unsafe and inhumane. The double-deckers are designed to haul smaller animals such as cows, pigs, and sheep. Horses are taller and often slip and fall because they can’t raise or lower their heads for balance. They are often unable to get up and are all-too-frequently trampled to death. They slip on steep and narrow metal ramps, placing them at risk of serious injuries. There have been grisly accidents leaving trucks overturned and horses suffering in fields of blood and broken bones on our roads and highways.
A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on horse slaughter recommended banning double-decker trucks, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has finalized a rule prohibiting their use in transport to any point, intermediate or final, en route to a horse slaughter plant. Logically, if it’s an unsafe vehicle for driving a truckload of horses to slaughter, then it’s an unsafe vehicle for driving a truckload of horses elsewhere, too. Double-deckers simply can’t be tall enough, no matter how they’re designed, to provide adequate space for horses and still meet highway clearance rules. Bipartisan legislation in Congress would codify the ban on double-deckers and apply it to the interstate transport of any equines. It’s championed by U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and U.S. Representatives Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Andy Harris, R-Md., and supported by a wide range of groups including The Humane Society of the United States and the American Veterinary Medical Association.
As the House and Senate work to reauthorize major legislation dealing with highway transportation, committees in both chambers have included language banning horse transport in double-deckers. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, with the leadership of Chairman John Rockefeller, D-W.Va., approved the double-decker provision in December as part of the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2011, and last week it was passed by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, with strong support from Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., and Ranking Member Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.
With bipartisan support from both chambers, and the backing of a diverse coalition of stakeholders, you’d think the ban on double-deckers would be a slam dunk. But that’s not the way Washington works. In the Senate, where any one member can send a sensible measure careening off the legislative highway, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who’s in charge of the $13 billion needed to fund the bill, has announced that he will block it. He says that the rodeo is big business in Montana, and the rodeo operators want to keep using double-deckers to transport horses—never mind the public safety hazards on our roads, the welfare of the horses, or the ability of the rodeo industry to continue operating simply with more secure modes of transporting the animals it relies on for its events and its economic success. It’s a race to the bottom and a least common denominator method of lawmaking, when one narrow interest can overturn an entire piece of legislation—like a double-decker truck overturned on the road.
When Senator Mark Kirk speaks in favor of the legislation, he refers to an accident he witnessed in Wadsworth, Ill., in 2007, when a double-decker tractor trailer carrying 59 Belgian draft horses crashed, mangling the trailer and killing 15 of the horses, overwhelming community responders and shutting down highway traffic for more than five hours. “Besides being an inhumane way to transport horses, double-deck trailers pose a major safety threat to the drivers of the imbalanced, oversized vehicles, as well as to other motorists,” Kirk said. “Unfortunately, crashes due to these factors have occurred, and the results of the accidents are devastating.”
This is the kind of common-sense sentiment that should prevail in the Senate—not the narrow-minded obstructionism and obstinacy that Senator Baucus is exhibiting here.
