DESLOGE, Mo. — "Future Home of Horse Killing," reads a banner on Main Street. It protests a new French-run horse-slaughtering plant that has just begun operation in this southeast Missouri town of about 3,500 people.
The plant will process horse meat for the dining tables of Europe, an idea that runs smack against the American love affair with the horse.
Mary Voertmann of nearby Farmington, whose family breeds Arabian horses, is the organizer of Missourians Against Slaughtering Horses (MASH), a group working to get the plant shut down.
"I consider this to be a holocaust for equines," she said. "These people are coming in here to rape the horse industry. This is an outrage!"
Archway Packing Co. plant officials have been trying to keep a low profile, but that has been difficult since they asked for and were granted state permission to slaughter up to 100 horses daily and ship the meat to France, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Holland for human consumption.
To horse lovers, that's unthinkable. To John Cross, the plant's operations manager, it's just another slaughter operation.
"It's like all other businesses in the United States," Cross said.
Horse-slaughtering operations in the United States are nothing new. There are at least a dozen others, four in Texas alone, including one in downtown Ft. Worth.
Great Western Packing Co. of Morton, Tex., one of the largest horse-meat packers, has killed between 250 and 300 animals a day for 15 years with "no major public outcry," said Ben Ansolabehere, president of the company.
"I think this is an industry that takes care of the animals that are no longer useful for the riding horse industry or the working horse industry, and provides a marketable price," he said.
He said that his company, for which Cross previously worked as operations manager, pays between 40 cents and 60 cents per pound for a horse.
"We try to run a professional, first-class operation," Ansolabehere said. "We put (horses) down in a humane fashion."
The horses' hides are used for sporting equipment and other leather goods. The meat and entrails are used in dog food and fertilizers. Although it is legal to sell horse meat for human consumption in the United States, most of it is used in dog food.
Why begrudge European palates?
"It's a matter of taste, I guess, and I sure don't want to taste it," said Desloge Mayor Jack Rabaduex, who's at the center of the conflict.
