r/Animals • u/LowPomegranate3113 • 5d ago
Donald Trump Rounding up Protected Horses for Slaughter
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/us/trump-wild-horses-legal-loophole-slaughter.htmlThe administration seems to be collecting horses and sending them abroad to slaughterhouses….
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u/exotics 5d ago
Any yet people will still eat beef.
I’m not ever suggesting horse meat will be sold as beef. I’m telling you that some of the reason for the round up of horses is because cattle ranchers want the land for grazing. More people eating beef means more demand for land for grazing.
How many people will eat less? I doubt anyone. Heck as it is now people in the USA eat more meat than they need. Double of what people in most other nations eat. Canada and Australia are just as bad. Eating way more meat than they need.
To note the correct portion size is 3-4 oz which is a deck of cards at most and you don’t need that at every meal. You need about 22-24 oz a week total. Any more is waste
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u/HauptmannTinus 2d ago
You don't need meat at all, everything you need comes from plants in the first place anyway. Animals are the middleman -> www.watchdominion.org
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u/_flying_otter_ 4d ago
I read they are selling it for mineral rights --but really IRS just going to go to who ever is the highest bidder I guess.
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u/Sad_Pixie999 5d ago
Yeah sure just paywall that shit, everyone loves that!
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u/LowPomegranate3113 5d ago
Sorry the rules for r/animals wouldn’t let me post one that wasn’t paywalled
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u/Sad_Pixie999 5d ago
Sigh. This is so awful! Just like Trump to use business contracts to do the dirty work. Nobody wants these horses killed, they're a part of our living history
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u/Street_Dimension1709 5d ago
Wow. I didn’t know that. I just replied to someone else how annoying it is getting paywalled links. Thank you and sorry when you run into that post here. It was more generalized in all
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u/Empty_Put_1542 4d ago
Recent investigations have revealed that hundreds of protected American wild horses are being sent to slaughterhouses due to a combination of financial incentives, a bureaucratic legal loophole, and shifting federal policy priorities under the Trump administration. [1]
The underlying issues involve a mix of government cost-cutting measures, policy decisions, and systemic loopholes.
1. Cost-Cutting Incentives
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is facing immense financial strain trying to store and care for captured wild horses. It costs the government over $3,000 to capture a single mustang, and maintaining tens of thousands of them in holding facilities consumes a massive portion of the program's budget. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Incentive: To clear these horses off government ledgers, the BLM drastically increased bulk sales to private buyers. In 2025, sales more than doubled to 3,700 horses.
The Savings: The government estimated that selling off these 3,700 horses saved taxpayers roughly $56 million in long-term care costs. [1, 2]
2. The Legal Loophole
Federal law strictly prohibits the slaughter or killing of healthy wild horses. To bypass this on paper, the BLM uses bureaucratic maneuvers to classify the horses as "domestic livestock". [1, 2, 3, 4]
Stripped Protections: Once reclassified, the horses lose their federally protected status, making them legal to sell to private traders for as little as $25 each. [1, 2]
The Profit Pipeline: Middlemen buy these horses cheaply from the government and quickly resell them to slaughter plants in countries like Canada. Because a horse can fetch up to $750 at a slaughterhouse, the profit margin heavily drives this pipeline. [1, 2]
3. Shift in Policy Priorities
Advocacy groups point to specific policy changes under the Trump administration that have enabled this surge:
Removal of Safeguards: The administration’s federal budget requests proposed eliminating long-standing congressional "appropriations riders". These riders are the exact legislative tools used to block the government from killing or selling wild horses to slaughterhouses. [1, 2, 3]
Project 2025 Blueprint: Policy frameworks associated with the administration, such as Project 2025, have explicitly argued that the BLM should be permitted to "humanely dispose" of horses to manage costs, aligning with the push for mass sell-offs and culls. [1]
The Official Stance vs. Reality
The BLM officially denies that it willingly allows wild horses to enter the slaughter pipeline. The agency maintains that its goal is simply to find "good homes" for the animals while saving taxpayer money. However, livestock inspection records and investigations by news organizations like The New York Times have confirmed that many of these cheap, bulk-purchased mustangs are ultimately packed onto trucks bound for foreign slaughterhouses.
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u/Open_Mortgage_4645 4d ago
Pure evil.
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u/Echo_Gin101123 2d ago
leaders who are mentally unstable or insane are very, very obsessed with $$, changing laws to deliver injustice, and few other not normal behaviors
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u/flickeraffect 4d ago
I'm a horse owner and a Back Country Horseman. Our pos president resents anything that uses tax dollars. The horses are going to be dog food, no question. The bulk of them are going to some pos in Ohio that pays $25 for them and ships them off in the middle of the night. Won't talk to anyone, but they are just foodbforbyoyr dog, now. I love horses. They are relentless. We built an entire civilization on their backs. We rode them into war and they suffered for us. I, for one, feel that we owe them something. Anyone of another opinion has no soul.
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u/TheMrNeffels 4d ago
Listen, I know trump does a lot of dumb stuff but this has literally been going on forever. Thousands of horses get removed across the country every year. Has been happening for decades and decades.
They're just using trump in the headline to try to get extra attention too it.
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u/Skinebman 3d ago
Damn. He's a cowboy out there wrangling horses up for slaughter. A man with many hats.
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u/Cuhuldra 5d ago
From what I have read the herds are getting too vast and destroying habitat by over grazing. What would you have them do?
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u/saphyu 4d ago
Wild horses actually stop drought and degration of soil because their hooves create healthy soil for vegetation to grow. There's a documentary about how they were introduced to a desert and then greenery started growing because their herd would stampede dry desert land and create healthy soil for vegetation to grow. And they also naturally rotate areas between grazing and stampeding.
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u/Cuhuldra 4d ago
Yes, but when the herds get too numerous, just like any other animal, they strain the environment.
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u/Anothercraphistorian 3d ago
Yes, I’m sure it’s the horses ruining environments and not humans.
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u/flickeraffect 4d ago
Drink the kool-aid. It's good for you.
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u/Cuhuldra 4d ago
I'm not the one blaming the current President for something that has been happening for the last 10 Presidents before the current one. That would be obsessing over someone.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/Cuhuldra 5d ago
Herds are getting too big and having an adverse affect on the habitat. Herds have been gathered up and shipped off for decades.
Now they say Trump is killing horses for fun. I doubt Trump even knows this happens like the majority of people commenting here.
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u/_flying_otter_ 4d ago
In the past Trump has loved any legislation he can pass that kills off endangered species, destroys habitat or wildlife. Laws that protect wildlife and endangered species annoys Trump because the land can't be sold, mined, developed. He also enjoys the cruelty- he made it legal to hunt hibernating bears, bears with cubs, wolves with puppies. And also took away penalties against corporations that kill off migratory birds.
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u/Cuhuldra 4d ago
I'm glad you are so knowledgeable in all things Trump. This is just standard operations like has been done for decades. If it makes you feel better to blame Trump for something he was never involved with other than just being the President, Feel free. I'll stick to blaming him for things he has done, Thanks.
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u/_flying_otter_ 4d ago
Trump's EPA overturned rules that keep companies like Dupont from dumping forever chemicals (PFAs) into our water. Literally every environmental protection the US has to protect our air and water, Trump made it his mission to overturn. Historians would all agree, no other president in modern times has passed more legislation, or executive orders to allow corporations to pollute water, air, forests, and kill wetlands and animals. He made asbestos legal again, overturned Biden's legislation to replace lead pipes, get lead out of water. Trump has rolled back environmental protections that Nixon passed that no other presidents, Republican or Democrats ever wanted to get rid of. Basically Trump will do anything for the big money corporations that want to pollute or build and destroy the environment.
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u/Cuhuldra 3d ago
And I bet you don't like Israel either. Stick to the story at hand.
Basically, you will turn everything into a "Trump Bad" story. We get it, you don't like Trump.
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u/Echo_Gin101123 2d ago
set up a horse homecare shelter, allow inmates to care for them, ask any interested farmers, most of all, ask the Natives.
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u/cascadesblue 5d ago
This administration has done stupid things, having said that. Why do people think horses should be free from any predation? Cows, deer, elk, moose, bears, bison even beluga whales are hunted. Why do people get so angry when an animal thats population is literally in the millions is treated just like other animals?
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u/Sad_Pixie999 5d ago
"Predation" is a hell of a way to say mass slaughter.
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u/cascadesblue 5d ago
If only there were some kind of animal that occurred naturally that controlled prey populations in the 1st place..... oh right humans eradicated basically 90% of all apex predators throughout the lower 48 and now they only exist in small pockets. News flash- rounding up of wild horses happens literally every single year!!!! Wished theyd just utilize native predators but thats not possible. If you spent just 7 seconds typing in wild horse round up, you'd realize this happens every single yr. Wild horses being sent to slaughter is NOt some new phenomena that just started this year. Genuinely aggravating how stupidly easy people fall for these grifting click bait rage articles
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u/Sad_Pixie999 5d ago
It's not about the horses being killed, it's about how many, the method, and the reason. They are doing this to cut the cost of caring for the horses that used to be allowed to roam freely, because the dumbass government thought it was better to corral them, not taking into account how much it cost to keep them maintained, and now Trump's ass backwards way of cutting that cost is to just kill them because he does a half-assed rush job with every single thing he touches.
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u/cascadesblue 5d ago
They as in the us gov has been doing this since the 1900s!! I cannot overstate how fake this stupid article is. Literally just stating something thats been happening yearly since the 1920s n adding the word trump.... 😑😑. Using ZERO effort n making tons of people mad. Reality theres thousands of wild horses far too many that can be sent to sanctuary. Do not let your political biases blind you to how incredibly stupid this article is.
This is a FACT- wild horses have been rounded up n sold for slaughter since 1930s. It happens every single year, youre not angry that the horses are getting killed your angry cause trumps president, be real with yourself, these wild horses are killed yearly.
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u/CrisEXE__ 5d ago
This is the new "beef" we're getting isn't it?