PIERRE - After an avalanche of criticism, public support is growing for a bill proposing horse slaughtering in South Dakota, a state lawmaker says.

"I'm getting e-mails 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in favor of it," Sen. Frank Kloucek, D-Scotland said Monday.

Kloucek introduced SB170, which, in its original version, would have allowed up to $1 million in state economic development loans to establish a horse slaughtering plant.

The Senate Agriculture Committee killed the bill last week, but mainly for procedural reasons. A number of committee members who voted against the measure said they were not opposed to horse slaughtering.

Before the vote, lawmakers got hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from all over the country, prompted in part by a blitz campaign by the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

"They even had our cell numbers," Kloucek said. "That tells me they had someone on the inside. They were very organized."

Kloucek proposed the bill because the last two horse-processing plants in the United States -- in Texas and Illinois -- were closed by state laws. A bill in Congress would institute a nationwide ban.

In the meantime, Kloucek said, hundreds of thousands of unwanted horses are languishing, either at taxpayers' expense, or at the owners' expense. And some horses are simply abandoned.

"It's appalling that we don't have horse harvesting in the United States," he said.

He also pointed out that the Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments passed a resolution last year, unanimously, encouraging Congress to support new horse-processing plants.

Kloucek admitted he wasn't prepared for the national outcry, but in the past week, he said, he has received hundreds of messages of support.

A veterinary student from the University of Washington wrote in an e-mail: "I greatly lament the horse slaughter ban in Texas and Illinois. I am not alone in this sentiment; the vast majority of large-animal veterinary students that I know of oppose the horse slaughter ban. "

A Kansas horse owner wrote, "Horses are currently in a crisis situation, and we need regulated U.S. slaughter plants to handle the excess horses that are no longer able to be cared for by their owners."

John Kabeiseman, a horse trainer from Yankton wrote, "I would be willing to come to Pierre and speak to anyone you wish if that would help."

Kabeiseman said Monday, "A kill market sets a base price for horses."

With no kill market, people are forced to care for old, sick or unmanageable horses, at great expense. Or, they have to put them down, which Kabeiseman said was difficult.

Sharon Herron of Union Center, who raises horses, also raised that issue in a letter to the editor in the Rapid City Journal. "How many people have the means to euthanize and bury their horses?" she wrote. "The cost is astronomical! Not the least the chemicals that would be put in the soil."

Herron said she tries to do everything she can to save horses, but she added, "This is ridiculous."

Kloucek said he's considering two options. He might try to "smoke out" the bill -- a legislative maneuver to force another committee vote, then the vote of the full Senate. Failing that, Kloucek will ask the Legislature's Executive Board for a summer study.

"We're firing back," Kloucek said.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or at bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com