In horse slaughter, a controversial man and complicated issue

COLUMBUS – Not far from an equestrian center that caters to some of the finest horses to enter a show ring, a Polk County man started his own horse enterprise late last year, though one that hinges on a practice little known outside the equine industry.

Justin Scott White, 26, has made no secret of his business or equines featured on his Carolina Feedlots Facebook page. The big Belgian draft workers, the steady quarter horses, the paints dappled in white and brown, sometimes an Arabian with its crescent head or a Tennessee Walker, celebrated for being sure of foot and smooth in gait, are all destined for a particular fate. White bought the horses to resell for slaughter, unless a buyer steps forward to save them from a journey that ends at a processing plant in Mexico.

Until 2007, that journey might have ended at a slaughterhouse in Texas or Illinois, until focus on the issue forced the shutdown of those plants.

Since starting in December, White estimates he’s resold 150 or 200 horses, keeping them out of the slaughter chain. But he’s come under fire in some corners of the Internet by horse lovers who fear he’s mistreating the animals. White’s been reported to county animal control and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture, and often, critics stop in front of his property, taking photos of pens out front on suspicion that the horses are neglected.

“Everything we do here, we tell the truth, and sometimes people get their feelings hurt by the truth. Nobody wants to know horses go to slaughter,” he said to a reporter who stopped by unannounced, where animals penned near an aged white barn had access to water and hay. “Everyone that says these things, they’re not hurting me, they’re hurting the horses.”

But the law also has concerns about White. In South Carolina, he has five pending charges of ill-treatment of animals brought by the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies allege four horses and a donkey under White’s care were starved of food and without water. One of the horses died before it could be removed to an animal rescue.

White denies wrongdoing, and said the dispute stems from tension with his mother-in-law, who contacted animal control. According to an incident report, she told officers that White would buy sickly horses at auction for slaughter resale, bringing them first to the Waterloo property, where he also lived.

“Some of the horses that Mr. White would buy were not able to be sold or had died in the process and that he would dump the remains of the horses in a ravine on the property,” a deputy noted in a report after taking her statement.

By the time White was charged, he had moved to family land in Polk County and, in March 2015, opened the Southeastern Cattle Company to buy and sell cattle and horses for slaughter. He later began selling some horses, mules and donkeys through Carolina Feedlots on a page that’s garnered nearly 25,000 “likes,” posting each with a “bail” amount, usually around $1,000.

Many of the animals come from livestock auctions, brought by owners who no longer want or can care for them. Some animals bear telltale signs of past neglect – ribs poking through ragged frames or sores from an outgrown halter biting into the nose, while others carry the signs of physical or mental abuse.

Often though, the horses are not unlike the rotating selection of dogs that pass through a shelter: sound animals with years of loyal service ahead of them, trained and loved until an owner’s lifestyle or circumstances changed.

Carolina Feedlots features photos and sometimes videos with descriptions noting good trail horse candidates, suitable mounts for young or inexperienced riders and those still waiting to be saddle broke.

“Looks as if someone started putting a lot of time in her and then didn't finish,” a post notes of a two-year old Palomino-paint mix. “Very easy going and laid back. She doesn't mind much of anything at her age!”

White says he tends to keep a horse only about a week, trying to flip some quickly to homes, and failing that, he ships a trailer load of the animals on a 24-hour journey to Presidio, Texas, where they are sold to a middleman for transport from the border town to a slaughterhouse in Mexico.

While the American palate finds horse meat repugnant, several European and Asian countries have no qualms about a protein described as similar to beef in taste, but leaner and healthier.

Slaughter: A market changed

In the United States, the distaste for horse meat has extended to politics, and the country has no equine slaughterhouses, but market demands combined with horse overpopulation pushed the industry to Mexico and Canada. 
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 100,000 horses were slaughtered in three U.S. facilities in 2006, the last full year of production.

But court decisions and legislation the following year forced the shutdown of the two Texas slaughterhouses and another in Illinois. Congress later defunded USDA inspections of commercially produced horse meat, effectively shutting down that industry.

The USDA tracks horses that are shipped to Canada and Mexico, but does not identify the reasons for the export, which could range from slaughter to sales to equestrians.

But the numbers also indicate the slaughter ban only shifted the industry: In 2006, when the United States still housed slaughterhouses, about 36,000 equines crossed into Canada and Mexico. Those numbers have steadily ticked up, and in 2014, more than 105,000 horses crossed the southern border, while 45,000 went north.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has continually advocated for federal legislation that would ban horse slaughter, arguing that the now-closed facilities were inhumane and many horses have been given drugs that the FDA bans for human consumption.

The horse holds a cherished legacy in the United States – a nation-builder, a warrior, a movie star, a sports legend, said Nancy Perry, senior vice president for the nonprofit’s government relations.

But even through domestication, it remains a prey animal driven by flight instincts.

“Once they are in the kill box, the most natural response a horse has to fear, when they are trying to flee something, is to fling their head,” Perry said. “The one thing you need in a commercial slaughterhouse to conduct humane slaughter is to hit that animal with a captive bolt in the exact right place to render them insensitive to pain. To do that takes a lot of skill and with a horse is nearly impossible to do cleanly. They are enduring multiple hits with that several inch bolt that moves into their body. Sometimes they are not ever hit properly and they are shackled and hoisted and bled out and dismembered while they are still blinking and flinching.”

Even when horse slaughter was legal in the United States, travel was long for most horses and oversight was weak in a process Perry describes as cruel.

Others though, believe that in banning the industry, the U.S. is only condemning slaughter-bound horses to longer travel and a brutal death.

One method used in local Mexican facilities involves severing the spine of a conscious horse with a short knife called a puntilla, according to Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State University.

Grandin’s work has centered on designing and promoting humane slaughterhouses, but she reached nationwide prominence for discussing her own her own autistic mind, one she said that “thinks in pictures,” allowing her to see stresses animals face they enter chutes.

“[T]he worst outcome from an animal welfare perspective is a horse going to a local Mexican [slaughterhouse.] Once a horse crosses the Mexican border, there is no way to monitor how it is transported or slaughtered,” Grandin wrote in a 2012 paper outlining her concerns. “A plant in the U.S. would be monitored by the [USDA Food Inspection and Safety Service] and the conditions for both transport and slaughter would be better.”

‘The real world’

Whitney Wright, executive director of the Leicester-based equine rescue, Hope for Horses, notes that “if you’ve seen videos of horse slaughter, you will not sleep,” but said the excess population is a problem not going away anytime soon.

She would like to see people like Grandin overseeing slaughterhouses, where unwanted horses meet a humane death.

“You have to live in the real world,” she said of an opinion she knows is controversial. “There is an excess number of horses. You take away the slaughterhouses, what is that going to do to the population? It’s supply and demand. So now instead of going to Texas or Illinois for a horrific experience, they get to go twice as far and have an even worse experience because the slaughterhouses in Mexico are not regulated.”

Hope for Horses typically has 20 to 25 equines, most available for adoption, and Wright points to a lack of breeding regulations as a major contributor to the problem.

“A great number of them years ago came from the thoroughbred industry, because they would breed, breed, breed to get that one horse out of 100 that was a winner,” she said. “But the biggest problem right now is indiscriminate backyard breeding.”

Like backyard breeders of dogs, an owner looks for a little extra cash with foals, and if they don’t sell, they contribute to unwanted horses that end up abroad or in rescues, including Hope for Horses, which often cannot offer space for a new ward.

But those rescues are often home to high-quality horses in need of a little positive rebranding, said Christy Counts, president of the New York-based Watershed Animal Fund.

Too often, potential adopters believe equine rescues only cater to abused animals with health or behavior problems, when in reality, many horses are ideal candidates for mounts, pets and companions.

The organization recently hired Brains on Fire, a Greenville, South Carolina, marketing firm specializing in social causes, to create a campaign that helps push that message. Expected at the end of this year, the heart of the campaign will likely draw from a model already laid by canine and feline advocates.

“Twenty years ago, a lot of groups came together and decided they wanted to make considerable change in dog and cat welfare, and everyone started working together to change public perception of an adoption dog,” Counts said. “It became cool for the public to adopt a dog and had a really strong social responsibility. No one’s really come together in a unified way behind horses in that way yet.”

She points to another dilemma horse owners face as the animal nears the end of its life. Euthanizing and disposing of an animal that can easily top 1,000 pounds – big draft horses might tip the scales at a ton – can be costly and sometimes difficult, making a trip to an auction house an attractive alternative.

New investigation

Polk County, part Blue Ridge Mountains, part Piedmont that unfolds in rolling meadows to the Palmetto State, has long prided itself as an equestrian haven.

But with the 2014 opening of the tony Tryon International Equestrian Center, the 20,000 population county jumped into a horse arena recognized the world over.

As of March, the equestrian center is credited for injecting $9.2 million into the local economy, with 115 new jobs created, according to an ongoing study by Western Carolina University.

Among other happy problems, officials in the county seat of Columbus are trying to figure where downtown visitors, clad in boots and breeches, park horse trailers when they visit local businesses.

But about a dozen miles away, Justin White and his slaughter transport business is facing its own travails.

He is under investigation by the N.C. Department of Agriculture, which has jurisdiction in reviewing health certificates and related paperwork required in the transfer of horses. Items that are not in order could result in civil penalties.

A Polk County animal control officer, Mike Herman has visited the property and seen the animals after receiving several complaints. He declined to comment further.

But White will likely be called back to court in Laurens County later this month to face bond issues, said Warren Mowry, deputy solicitor prosecuting that case.

Under terms of his $25,000 bail agreement, White is not authorized to leave South Carolina. In his 2014 charges, he listed his Columbus address on court documents as his home residence, but paperwork on file indicates he did not request permission to cross the state line to go home. White, though, said the judge is aware of his North Carolina home and was told he could leave South Carolina.

If convicted, each pending South Carolina cruelty charge against him carries a minimum 180-day sentence and up to five years in prison.

White prides himself on the horses that have been diverted from the slaughter market through the Carolina Feedlots Facebook page. Some go to local or regional homes, though two were sold to Canadian buyers. From a financial standpoint, the individual sales save him transportation costs, but much of the rest is a wash, lost in paying workers to assess and photograph the animals and other expenses, he said.

White denies that he’s starved animals, and said too lean or injured horses come to him already neglected. He doesn’t hold them long enough to fatten or starve them.

His lot recently held paints with healthy girths, but also a quarter horse with protruding ribs and another that favored a hind leg, raising its hoof as though it didn’t want to rest weight there.

That horse, White said, came with a string tied at the ankle too tight, one his workers removed.

And in a slaughter industry that pays by the pound, he added there’s an incentive to keep an equine from losing weight.

“A poor horse won’t make me no money,” he said.