RE: Auctions etc..long rant on the advantages of wealth

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

Every so often the issue of auctions comes up on one of the lists I read. I
love my horses and won't buy any more because I know I won't sell them....so
already I'm a softy. When I was a little girl, my dad was a post WWII just
out of the army civil servant with 4 kids and the only time we had a
barbecue it was "horsemeat steak"....because it was so cheap. As soon as I
was old enough to know that wasn't a cut of meat, it was out of my
diet....like by age 6. Eating horses  goes back to prehistory. I don't do
it. I don't eat cows, pigs, and sheep either. Chickens and I don't feel so
friendly. But people do eat meat. If they are going to eat meat, the
processing right back to the birth of the animal should show some respect
for the animal to be eaten. There is an alternative, however, in countries
that really don't kill horses for meat. You will see it every day in Egypt
and many countries that use horses for work. I see donkeys pulling carts
with sores on their backs that make you want to cry. Horses with ringbone
and navicular that are still hauling vegetables because the guy who owns
them can't sell them for enough to buy a new horse and without the horse he
can't sell, and if he doesn't sell his family starves. He CAN'T sell his
horse at auction to a killer, nor can he afford to kill the horse himself,
so one day the poor battered thing will be beside the road waiting for
someone to haul the corpse away, and he just prays that he will have saved
enough to replace it.  You all are talking about horses that are for
pleasure and for profit in non-producing areas like racing and shows. You
are lucky to have any way to be able to find a new home for a horse through
an auction and if it goes to killers, then do something about how THEY
operate. Watching horses work themselves to death takes a lot longer and
hurts more. Rather than arguing about auctions, look at some way the horses
that need to be put down for health reasons or simple lack of a home can be
done so with some decency and then let the body be used in whatever way
serves.

I know that this is trite, but I know so many families here that would think
they'd died and gone to heaven just to be able to live in your hay sheds,
let alone your barns. Our reality includes no properly trained vets, no
trained farriers, no equine clinics, no nice surgery...only in a field or a
washed out stall. Most of the supplements and medicines that you talk about,
we will never see unless someone goes to Europe or the US and brings them
back. Do our horses have EIA? Who knows? A wormer here costs twice what it
does in the US in a country where the average salary of someone who can
afford to worm his horses is less than 1/4. Forget the farmers and carters.
We have a charity equine hospital in many of the larger cities, Alexandria,
Cairo, Luxor, Brooke Animal Hospital, but it can only treat the most acute
cases due to lack of space and funding so they work mostly on education.
Less than 1% of our horses are vaccinated against anything. You all have so
much, so rather than arguing about auctions, which in themselves are
great...wish we had them other than for expensive purebreds from the
government stud....do something about the condition of the slaughterhouses.
Work on education...it's a hell of a lot easier in a country where people
can read and write. Teach children to respect the welfare of animals...that
too is easier in a country where they are supposed to be companions rather
than implements or competitors for food.

Come to Egypt and visit a new part of the world.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net