Proponents of federal legislation to ban horse slaughter in the United States are gathering in Washington, D.C., today and Wednesday to lobby for the passage of the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.

Calling the event Americans Against Horse Slaughter Week, citizen lobbyists will press for passage of pending legislation that would place a federal ban on the slaughter of horses for human consumption. It would also prohibit the transport of horses to other countries, such as Mexico and Canada, for processing.

In 2007, the last three foreign-owned horse slaughter plants operating in the U.S. were closed by state laws. Without the new federal law, however, horse slaughter plants could open in other states where such laws do not exist.

That is exactly the hope of Sen. Frank Kloucek, D-Scotland, and the idea behind a nonbinding resolution, passed by the South Dakota Senate late in the 2008 session, which opposes the federal efforts mentioned above.

Like Sen. Kloucek and the American Veterinary Medical Association, we think the anti-slaughter advocates are creating a bigger animal abuse problem than they are solving with the proposed federal ban. Kloucek's resolution says the ban puts horses at risk of abandonment and starvation.

Proponents of the federal ban have done nothing to address the real issue here: What to do with an estimated 100,000 horses relinquished by their owners each year that currently go to slaughter?

Suggestions that they all be sent to horse "rescue" facilities or humanely euthanized are naïve at best, absurd at worst.

The rescue of untold thousands of horses each year until natural death is financially unrealistic. And the costs of euthanizing an animal that large can be $400 or more. Burying the carcass poses a larger environmental risk of biological and chemical contamination of ground water.

Additionally, slaughter opponents fail to recognize the supply-and-demand power of the marketplace.

Cultural chauvinism in dietary choices doesn't become any of us. Although we have no desire to eat horsemeat, we respect the fact that some people do. In Belgium, the price of horse flesh has hit an all-time high, perhaps in response to outbreaks of BSE, or mad cow disease, in Europe. So even a federal ban against transport likely won't keep many horses from crossing the border illegally.

Keeping horse slaughter legal and federally regulated here in America is a more humane option than the current situation.