Showing posts with label Sue Wallis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sue Wallis. Show all posts

1/29/14

"Slaughterhouse" Sue Wallis Dead

reblogged from Straight From the Horse's Heart

A Statistical Analysis of Slaughterhouse Sue
By John Holland ~ President of the Equine Welfare Alliance

“Sue is a compulsive fact creator…”

"Slaughterhouse" $ue Wallis
“Slaughterhouse” $ue Wallis


Hi, my name is John Holland, and I am a data-holic. I usually spend my day furtively downloading statistics and information; analyzing it, graphing it, correlating it and trying to glean insights into the true workings of the horse world.
But today is different. Today, I was inspired to opine by a thing of great rarity in our struggle; a well researched article. It appeared in the Saint Louis Post Dispatch titled Horse slaughterhouse plans stalled in Missouri and it convinced me we are winning this struggle, at least for the moment.
No, the article did not contain a new revelation about the outcome of a court case, or the result of a vote. It contained something even more telling: It documented Sue Wallis slipping beyond the gravitational pull of reality and into an alternate universe of anti-logic, where up is down and dark is light.
Sue begins the interview with her now familiar claim that she chose Missouri because, “If you draw a 500-mile circle from western Missouri you encapsulate 30 percent of the horse herd in the U.S.” After musing over the concept of the US horse population constituting a single “herd”, I began wondered where she got this statistic.
You see, Sue and I share different forms of compulsion. I am a compulsive fact checker while Sue is a compulsive fact creator. So I ran the numbers and the result I got was 23.6% of the US horse population being within 500 miles (as the crow flies) of western Missouri.
This means Sue’s exaggeration coefficient for this statement is 27%[i]. This modest exaggeration would prove to be her perigee with reality before she would slingshot past it and off into the abyss of deep space.
After describing the law suit that had resulted in the Cole County judge’s directive to the Department of Natural Resources to hold off on issuing Rains the discharge permit, the story returned to the interview with Sue.
Wyoming's "$laughterhou$e" $ue Walli$ ~ photo by Pam Nickoles
“The horse industry has been decimated,” Wallis said. “We have worthless horses being turned out and abandoned.”
As I read this, I again felt compelled to calibrate Wallis’ definition of decimation. The original term came from quaint custom of the Roman army by which they would execute every tenth soldier of a disgraced unit so as to improve morale. Was every tenth horse in America being abandoned?
 The only state I could find that keeps abandonment data is New Mexico. During my research, they provided me with a very detailed list of all the estray horses they had picked up since 2006. Last year they picked up exactly 124 horses.
 Given the estimated 147,181 horses in New Mexico, this means that the abandonment rate is 0.06% or one horse in every 1,186. Since decimation would be one in ten (10%), Sue’s exaggeration coefficient had suddenly rocketed from 27% to 16,666%.
Parroting the discredited 2011 GAO report, Wallis went on to say “People take care of animals that have value. It’s when they don’t that they neglect them.”
This was the conjecture used to excuse why the GAO studied horse prices instead of actually studying neglect as it had been assigned to do. It is, of course, utter nonsense. Few household pets have any monetary value, yet most people take good care of them.
It gets better. “Every breed registry is down 70 percent since 2007. Fewer colts are being born,” Wallis said.
Apparently Wallis has data I have not seen; data showing among other things that only the birth rate of colts is in decline. Is there some strange gender asymmetry going on here? Or is it possible that the Executive Director of the International Equine Business Association, the expert of CNN interviews and countless articles does not know that colts are males and the proper term would have been foals?
As for “every breed registry being off 70% since 2007”, Sue’s exaggeration coefficient is pretty substantial. According to the Jockey Club, thoroughbred foal registrations are off 34.5%, not 70%. Some breeds appear to have been almost unaffected, but the AQHA’s annual report does show about a 49% reduction in foal registrations from its peak in 2007.
"Slaughterhouse" $ue Wallis ~ Horse guts and blood are what drives this political nut-job
 “Slaughterhouse” $ue Wallis ~ Horse guts and blood
are what drives this political nut-job




The pattern with Quarter Horses is a familiar one for those of us who have been around the horse world for a few decades. Breeds come into favor, resulting in indiscriminate breeding spurred on by the greed of their breed registry. Then the bubble bursts. Just before the decline began, the then executive vice president of the AQHA, Bill Brewer, gave an impassioned speech at their annual convention urging more breeding so there would be “enough good horses in the future”.
A great breed has been degraded in the process. Quarter Horses now commonly suffer from a wide range of maladies such as GBED, HERDA, HYPP, and Navicular. The most common complaint of owners is that they “bred the feet off them.” This could explain why AQHA membership is down 18.6% since 2007. I wondered to myself, would Sue suggest killing off a bunch of their remaining members as a solution to the decline?
Sue continues, “That’s 70 percent less feed being sold, 70 percent fewer jobs, 70 percent fewer veterinarians.”
Apparently Sue believes that a short term drop in foal (excuse me colt) births means that the whole horse population suddenly drops by the same percentage. Despite Sue’s best efforts, horses do often live well into their 20s and beyond, meaning that recent foal crops would represent only a few percent of the population.
With a nearly 50% decrease in foals, the population of registered quarter horses dropped from 3,218,113 in 2007 to 2,978,776 in 2012 according to the AQHA annual reports, a decline of just 7.4%. Here Sue gets an exaggeration coefficient of 945%.
But at this point her thinking turns to what I will call anti-logic, because if it came into contact with rational thought the two would annihilate each other with a thunderous clap, probably decapitating their host. She is proclaiming that all of this devastation is because we have too few horses as a direct result of not killing enough of them! This would be laughable if 2012 had not seen more US horses slaughtered than any year since 1994!
One survival strategy of prey animals is to synchronize their birthing so as to overwhelm their predators. Sue has adopted this strategy with her spontaneously created facts. She spews so many at one time that at least a few have a good chance to get past us unchallenged.
At this point in the interview, Sue seems to sense her interviewer is not buying her nonsense. So she throws her hyperbole engine into warp drive, saying “This has wrecked communities — all because of the elitist snooty arrogance of this bunch of people telling us what’s culturally acceptable to eat.”
The community of Boggy Bottom, the neighborhood behind the Dallas Crown slaughter house, was truly devastated by the pollution, stench and crime caused by the plant. I witnessed it firsthand. But where is Sue’s example of a community devastated by a lack of slaughter? Apparently with anti-logic you automatically get an anti-logic twin to Boggy Bottom, at least in the brain of Sue Wallis.
It is impossible for me to calculate the exaggeration factor for this statement because, since there is no truth at all to be exaggerated, it would require dividing by zero. I think I now fully understand Einstein’s quote about only the universe and human stupidity being infinite.
Yet the second half of the outburst is the most interesting of all.
Sue had apparently learned that the influential Busch brothers (former owners of Budweiser and Anheuser-Busch) had thrown their considerable weight into the battle on the side of the horses. Victoria McCullough had sent them a link to our report How the GAO deceived Congress, and Victoria said she thinks the outrage at this government deceit had caused them to weigh in.
Lately there has been an avalanche of high profile support for ending horse slaughter completely. In the government sector; President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary Vilsack have all come out against horse slaughter. At the state level, New Mexico’s Governor Susana Martinez, former governor Bill Richardson, Attorney General Gary King and others have spoken up for the horses. Celebrities such as the incredibly influential Robert Redford and Steven Spielberg have also taken a stand.
But most aggravating of all for Sue are the “snooty, arrogant billionaires”. This is because Sue knows that the money from big agriculture was the only advantage she had in this battle. Internationally known equestrian Victoria McCullough and her “snooty arrogant” friends, are serving to balance the scales by using their resources to multiply the impact of the tireless grass roots work of thousands of horse lovers and animal welfare organizations. This combination may well bring Slaughterhouse Sue crashing back to reality.

[i] How does a 6.4% error become an exaggeration factor of 27%?
Use this formula ((30-23.6)*100)/23.6), or ask your friendly local nerd.

8/2/12

New EU Regs Spell Likely End to Euro Markets for American Horse Meat

New EU Regs Spell Likely End to Euro Markets for American Horse Meat | Horse Back Magazine
July 31, 2012

By Steven Long

HOUSTON, (Horseback) – Despite claims by pro-horse slaughter activists who would seemingly put a slaughterhouse on every rural main street, the market for American horse meat just dwindled to almost nothing. The European Union released its 2013 regulations for meat imported into the 27 countries.

Under the new regulations, all horses and burros destined for slaughter and export to Europe must have a passport that shows they are free from substances such as phenylbutazone (bute), and clenbuterol. Such substances never leave an animal’s body and are carcinogens. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration bans their use in all food animals.

Almost all U.S. horses have been administered a dose of bute during their lifetime.

“These new rules would appear to make the entire issue of horse slaughter in America moot. If these guidelines are enforced, virtually every horse in America will become ineligible for slaughter,” said John Holland, president of the Chicago based Equine Welfare Alliance, the most prominent among the groups fighting to ban slaughter in the United States.

Holland said the issue of horse slaughter to benefit a relative few American breeders and horse owners is forcing unexpected problems for the overwhelming majority of horse owners from coast to coast who have nothing to do with the meat trade.

“There has been a lot of postulating about the “unintended consequences” of the 2007 inspections ban. Now the American horse industry will realize the unforeseen consequences if we are to continue to ship our excess horses to slaughter. It will require tracking of every drug given to a horse, the loss of our most effective and inexpensive medications and hugely increased veterinary costs overall. The days of that tube of bute being stashed in the grain room will be over,” Holland said.

The EU is putting teeth into strict enforcement of regulations that began in 2010 when the European nations warned horses coming to those countries from abroad must be in full compliance within three years. That time span has nearly lapsed.

The strict new passport regulations are contained in a European Commission document titled Imports of Animals and Food of Animal Origins From Non-EU Countries.

Horse slaughter activists such as Wyoming State Rep. Sue Wallis have been ignoring the European recommendations. That will now be impossible.

As is usually the case, Wallis has not returned emails or phone calls from Horseback seeking comment on the EU developments.

In an additional blow to the budding U.S. horse meat industry, it was leaned today that the Europeans have also have found Bute and Clenbuterol in Canadian horse product exported to Europe.

“It appears the Europeans have finally awoken to the abject reality of our many warnings that they are being fed unsafe horse meat. Their recent finding of phenylbutazone in samples of frozen Canadian horse meat shows that they are beginning to perform real tests, but if they routinely tested kidneys they would be in for a real shock!” Holland said.

Note ~ These are the EU regs we have been warning everyone about for the last two years. No one listened, not even in Washington. Well, here they are. It's the passport system or nothing. We told 'em so.
 
If any trolls read this, I did not write these rules. Neither did Steven Long or R.T. Fitch - you might want to apologize to R.T. for calling him a "turd" for "making this up" which he did not do. He was just reporting the facts, just like Steven and myself. Now, I don't blame you horse eating slugs for being upset at finding out we haven't been making all this stuff up after all, but, geez, have a little class! Well, maybe that is too much to ask after all.
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7/18/12

Rockville Horse Slaughter Plant another Misfire for Sue Wallis

July 17, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

John Holland
540.268.5693

Vicki Tobin                         
630.961.9292


Rockville Horse Slaughter Plant another Misfire for Sue Wallis

Chicago (EWA) - Despite dozens of articles about the imminent opening of a horse slaughter plant in Rockville, Missouri, EWA has learned that the plant is not opening anytime in the foreseeable future.

The announcement by Sue Wallis that the plant was undergoing renovation and would be open in September turns out to have been as premature and misleading as her earlier announcements in Wyoming and Mountain Grove, MO.

Wallis has not in fact purchased the plant, and cannot legally do so (had she the resources) because its ownership is entangled in a complex web of civil and criminal issues involving dubious deeds of trust through a shell company called Six Bears, and criminal theft charges against its Canadian operator Vincent Paletta.

Paletta had already been charged with two counts of felony stealing by deception when Wallis' announcement brought the plant to the attention of Mountain Grove attorney Cynthia MacPherson. It was MacPherson who uncovered the elaborate plan by the Palettas to protect the plant from creditors.

On behalf of one creditor, Elvin's Refrigeration, MacPherson has sued the Palettas, asking the court to block all transfers of the property until the ownership can be determined and creditors protected. The petition claims the Palettas violated MUFTA (Missouri Uniform Financial Transactions Act).

Elvin's has also filed a Nonconsensual Common Law Lien against the plant's owner charging that the Palettas fraudulently used bogus deeds of trust, and even sued themselves through their shell companies to protect their assets from creditors.

Although Wallis and her Missouri attorney Dan Erdel did form two new companies and have requested federal inspections, they do not own the plant for which the request was made thus rendering the filing moot. Moreover, records show that they have made no application to Missouri agencies for the required permits.

Undeterred, Wallis has already announced a plant in Oklahoma, where selling horse meat or possessing horse meat for sale is illegal. This announcement too has been widely reported as factual.

EWA has published a comprehensive report on the Gordian legal knot encasing the Rockville plant.

#



The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues-free 501c4, umbrella organization with over 245 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide in 18 countries. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids.




 
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6/13/12

The Art of Deception

EDITORIAL | The Art of Deception
by Vicki Tobin 2012.06.10

Sue Wallis [or whoever pens her ramblings] has mastered the art of writing fictitious statements and making them sound feasible.

In a cover letter to the release of her latest piece of fiction, she states her paper is a representation of the horse industry. Where is the data to back that statement? She is well known for making baseless statements and then when challenged, she cuts and runs.

She wants to kill horses. Period. How is that going to help the beleaguered horse industry that makes its billions from live horses? The answer is obvious. It won't.

Wallis speaks for a foreign meat industry. When did the horse industry ever produce meat? They produce athletes and performance horses, not horse meat.

The first section is nothing more than an attempt to build a market that doesn't exist and never will exist in America. If Americans ate horses and there was a buck to be made, horse meat would be in our grocery stores. There was nothing stopping the selling of horse meat in the U.S. during all the years slaughtered existed on our soil and never a mention of wanting to sell horse meat.

She babbles on and on about the foreign countries consuming meat. Really, now. Who cares? Every country has its own culture and is free to eat and do what they please. In our country, in our culture, we do not eat our horses. She claims she'll feed the hungry. Do we really want the U.S. to be known for wiping out world hunger by feeding the hungry toxic meat?

We agree with her comment that journalists don't always fact check but this is a positive for
Wallis, not a negative. If journalists did check facts, none of her nonsense would be published.

She claims horse slaughter is humane but hasn't provided any evidence. There are mounds of evidence to the contrary. Continually citing Humane Methods of Slaughter, she fails to state that having regulations and enforcing them are not the same. There aren't enough inspectors and yet, she wants to expand their workload to horse slaughter plants that will further compromise our food supply. Government authenticated undercover footage has proved over and over again just how inhumane horse slaughter really is. Not being able to explain away the cruelty, she simply states they are all fabricated. If she pulled FOIAs from the former U.S. plants, she would realize just how baseless her statements really are.

All we hear is humane and regulated horse slaughter plants. This is coming from someone who thought it was good clean fun to crawl around in the bloodied carcass of a horse. Someone that defends a livestock plant owner wanting to open a horse slaughter plant that was shut down by the USDA for inhumane treatment of slaughter animals and someone that defends a feedlot owner that has been cited over and over again for violations. Listen to her carefully. She defends the cruelty and attacks the individuals that expose it.

Next, we move on to food safety. She makes the statement that horse meat is safe. Horse meat from horses in other countries may be safe but it certainly isn't from horses raised in America. U.S. horses are not raised or regulated as food animals. We race horses; we raise horses to perform, to work, for law enforcement, as therapy animals, for sport, for pleasure and as companions. The foreign countries that consume horse meat raise horses as food animals. They do not raise their horses for other purposes and then send them to the butcher. They have passport systems requiring a veterinarian record every medication given to the horse from birth. They do not allow a horse to obtain a passport over 6 months of age. The passport systems are national systems to ensure food safety, not a home grown system devised by those who will profit from horse slaughter.

Once again, she reaches out to equine scientists and veterinarians to give her ammo to get around food safety regulations. Medical doctors determine the levels of medications that are safe for human consumption and what medications are banned in food animals. Food safety is to protect humans, not animals. Equine scientists and veterinarians are not medical doctors.

Stating that horse meat is nutritious and including pictures of plates of horse meat does not portray meat from American horses. Add a little Phenylbutazone (Bute) to the meat and the nutrition is outweighed by the risk of developing cancer. Included in her paper is a letter from [again] non medial doctors that unsuccessfully attempted to refute a paper published on Bute in the Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal. In typical Wallis fashion, she failed to print the response to the letter that was published in the same journal that validated the original study.¹ A comprehensive study was also published by a group of veterinarians in Ireland on the effects of Bute in humans and the consequences for violating the passport system.²

One constant with Wallis is that you can always count on her rabidly trying to find a way around food safety laws-in particular, with Bute. The reason she is so irrational on food safety is that if food safety regulations were enforced with U.S. horses, there would be no horses to slaughter. So she does what she does best; explains it away with irrelevant documents and statements from individuals [or herself] that have no training or qualifications to speak to food safety.

One of her favorite tricks is to include a link to prove something, counting on the reader never actually reading the document. As one example, she cites a 2008 European Union (E.U.) report as proof that drug residues have never been found in U.S. horses. The report she cites has nothing to do with results - it was about establishing protocols concerning drug residues.

In December of 2010, the E.U. released a report on how well the slaughter plants were implementing the recommendations of the 2008 audit and this one did include drug residues in U.S. horses. Not only did they find several banned substances but also discovered that the accompanying paperwork was falsified.³ Of course, she ignores the report because it blows her argument out of the water.
She disregards the documents that disprove her statements and when challenged, there is never a response other than to start name calling. How dare those tree hugging, vegan, radical animal activists provide facts.

In another example, Wallis talks about the rate at which Phenylbutazone disappears from the blood stream, implying that it simply goes away in a few days. In fact, the drug does two things Wallis doesn't mention. First, it metabolizes into Oxyphenylbutazone, a compound with a much longer rate of decay and the same toxic properties. Secondly, it takes up in injured tissue. This accounts for its extreme effectiveness, but it also makes it reappear in the blood later. The bottom line is that Bute is banned in all meat animals for very good scientific reasons.


Bute is known as the aspirin of horse world. It is as common as the bottle of aspirin in your medicine cabinet. Walk into any barn in the U.S. and you will find a form of Bute or Bute compounds. Bute is banned in all food producing animals and is banned by the FDA and the E.U. that consumes the meat from U.S. horses.

The GAO report that Wallis frequently quotes is primarily anecdotal comments and she validates this with the comments in her paper. Comments and interviews are not data.4 As one example, veterinarians from the meat industry were interviewed regarding abandoned horses instead of the state agencies that receive and record the reports. When EWA requested the underlying data that formulated the assumptions, our request was denied; a further indication that data did not exist. Wallis completely ignores the GAO recommendation that horse slaughter be banned permanently.

Wallis blames the closure of the U.S. horse slaughter plants for the decrease in horse values and all the woes of the horse industry. Not only did horse slaughter not end but it increased. Nothing changed other than where they were being butchered. Anyone possessing even a rudimentary knowledge of cause and effect would understand what a ridiculous conclusion that is. One year after the plants closed, our country experienced an economic crisis that has been compared to the Great Depression. Every industry in this country experienced declines. Does she honestly expect anyone to believe that if the plants had remained opened, that only the value of horses wouldn't have declined?

A recent poll by the prestigious pollsters, Lake Associates, revealed that 80% of Americans are against horse slaughter. Wallis can continue starting new organizations, changing the names and aligning with foreign meat businesses. She can continue making unsubstantiated statements and claims of support but in the end, she will be run out of town as she has been every time she tried to shove a slaughter plant down the throats of communities in America.

And that, my friends, speaks volumes of the opposition to horse slaughter in our country.


The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues-free 501c4, umbrella organization with over 245 member organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide in 18 countries. The organization focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids. www.equinewelfarealliance.org
 
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3/28/12

Experts Calling for Slaughter Ban In Wake of United Horsemen Summit Cancellation


March 27, 2012
CHATHAM, N.Y., (Equine Advocates) — Horse experts from across the country will converge on Equine Advocates Rescue & Sanctuary http://www.equineadvocates.org/ in Chatham, NY for the 2012 American Equine Summit on Saturday, March 31st and Sunday, April 1st with one objective — to reverse the damage done by Congress in Nov. 2011 by mobilizing an effective grassroots movement to end the slaughter of America’s horses in the US and abroad. The attendees will be comprised of press, lawmakers and those involved with equine welfare and the horse industry. Interested parties are encouraged to “like” Equine Advocates on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @EquineAdvocates, and for live updates during the Summit, use the following hash tag: #AES2012.

“It’s just plain wrong when lobbies for the Agriculture and Quarter Horse industries can influence members of Congress to supersede the will of the more than 80% of Americans who want a federal ban on horse slaughter,” said Susan Wagner, President of Equine Advocates. “The ‘eighty percenters’ deserve to be heard. Instead, lawmakers controlled by special interests prevailed and gave horse slaughter proponents exactly what they wanted. It’s not only egregious, it’s downright un-American.”

The Summit will be opened by legendary concert promoter and horse lover, Ron Delsener. Two new speakers have been added – Dr. Caroline Betts, who will discuss the discrepancies in the 2011 GAO report on the closings of horse slaughterhouses in the US, and former US Congressman John Sweeney (R-NY), who was the primary sponsor for the successful passage of H.R. 503, the House version of the 2006 American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

Other speakers include Cathleen Doyle, former head of the California Equine Council and Save the Horses, John Holland, President Equine Welfare Alliance, Dr. Kraig J. Kulikowski, D.V.M., Katia Louise, director of the film, “Saving America’s Horses,” Victoria McCullough who helped pass Florida’s “Equine Protection Act of 2010,” Jo Anne Normile of Saving Baby Equine Charity and founder of CANTER and Paula Bacon, former Mayor of Kaufman, Texas who led the fight to close Dallas Crown, a horse slaughterhouse operating in Kaufman.

Said Bacon, “I believe a horse slaughter plant is among the very least desirable things a community would want.  It ranks with a lead smelter plant and strip clubs, the dead opposite of economic development. A horse slaughter plant creates big, expensive environmental problems for taxpayers and stigmatizes the community as ‘that place where they slaughter horses’ — and good development goes elsewhere.”

States currently trying to revive and reopen horse slaughter plants include Oregon, Missouri and Tennessee.

Founded in 1996, Equine Advocates is a non-profit equine protection organization and Horse Sanctuary based in Chatham, NY.  Its mission is to rescue, protect and prevent the abuse of equines, especially through banning the slaughter of American horses, through education, investigation, rescue operations and public education. Email info@equineadvocates.org or call 518-245-1599 for more information.
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3/15/12

Letter From Cynthia MacPherson To Attorney Dan Erdel

Mountain Grove, Missouri is indeed fortunate to have an attorney like Cynthia MacPherson to represent their best interests. Especially when the question at hand is whether or not to allow Wyoming State Representative and the President of Unified Equine, Sue Wallis and her associates to construct a HSHC (Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption) plant in their town.

After an excellent presentation of the non-existent pros and the many cons, the town decided that there was no way Wallis was going to construct something like that in their town. A great decision, for more reasons than were clear at the time - as the following letter makes crystal clear.


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3/11/12

Sue Wallis Alleges Death Threats to YMCA Director


This is the latest from the Equine Welfare Alliance on Sue Wallis and her ill-fated attempt to force a horse slaughter plant down the throats of the people of Mountain Grove, Missouri. Folks, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.            


March 10, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

John Holland
540-268-5693
john@equinewelfarealliance.org

Vicki Tobin                         
630.961.9292
vicki@equinewelfarealliance.org


Horse slaughter promoter alleges death threats to YMCA director

Mountain Grove, MO (EWA) – A bizarre chain of events has followed the contentious meeting of the
Mountain Grove City Council on March 6th concerning the Unified Equine proposal to build a horse
slaughter plant near the town.

Unified Equine CEO Sue Wallis claimed that the project would be a 50% partnership with Belgian
company Chevideco, and that they would invest $6 to $7 million in a plant that would be designed
by Dr. Temple Grandin.

But during the meeting city residents became inflamed by a presentation given by attorney Cynthia
MacPherson, cataloging the pollution and crime that Chevideco’s Dallas Crown facility had brought to
the town of Kaufman Texas.

When banker Roger Lindsey rose to defend the project he was shouted down and left the meeting.
The unanticipated public anger touched off a series of events. First, the director of the Mountain
Grove YMCA announced that he would no longer permit Sue Wallis to hold a planned meeting there
on the following Monday.

On her facebook page, Wallis explained this apparent snub by saying “We have not spoken to him
directly, but it is my understanding that the YMCA director received death threats to his family, and
to sponsors of his organization, We have heard directly from other community members that they
have received threatening letters just for publicly expressing their support for the project.”

EWA contacted the Missouri State Police, the Mountain Grove police department and the YMCA
director, Chad Watson. State police captain Duane Isringhausen, told EWA’s John Holland that he
had received no such reports. The Mountain Grove police said they had heard the report and
investigated but that they could find no evidence of threats being made to anyone. YMCA director
Chad Watson said he had received no threats and had moved the meeting when he learned of its
subject. “This place is for the children”, said Watson.

Wallis announced that the meeting had been moved to the Wright County Livestock Auction, and
that while the public was welcome, anyone being “disrespectful” would be evicted. On March 10th
the auction owner, Nathan Kelly, said the meeting would be closed to the press. Kelly said he had
been “lambasted” by people opposed to the project.

MacPherson told EWA that she is encouraging people to stay away from the Wallis meeting; however
postings on the popular Topix blog show some residents plan a peaceful protest outside the auction.

The media ban was not the end of this bizarre episode. In subsequent interviews, Wallis was quoted
contradicting her earlier claims of backing from Chevideco saying that she did not have an
agreement, and that she would likely depend on local investors. This revelation follows the earlier
statement by Grandin that she knew nothing of the project.

EWA’s John Holland summed up the situation saying “It now appears that Wallis, rather than
bringing millions of investment dollars into the area, intends instead to borrow millions from the
people of Missouri to have someone who had not been told of the project build them a horse
slaughter plant that they don’t want! What could go wrong with that?

#

The Equine Welfare Alliance is a dues-free 501c4, umbrella organization with over 220 member
organizations and hundreds of individual members worldwide in 18 countries. The organization
focuses its efforts on the welfare of all equines and the preservation of wild equids.

www.equinewelfarealliance.org
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"From my earliest memories, I have loved horses with a longing beyond words." ~ Robert Vavra