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Re: [RC] OT: suicide race - Linda Marins----- Original Message ----- From: "Diane Trefethen" <tref@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> ... As to over-breeding, currently that must be left to education. If we are serious about reducing the numbers of excess horses, we need to encourage the funding of research into the real world causes and results of over-breeding and then THOUGHTFULLY design legislation to control it, not just pass a law prohibiting people from breeding such and such a number of horses... I composed the response below in response to Christy H.'s message of several weeks ago: Currently I sit on the fence for horse ...What is the long term affect of banning horse slaughter? IN FIVE YEARS OR TEN YEARS, will the over-population of unwanted horses wane,... then didn't send it when John nixed the "Dead Puppies" thread. I'm really loathe to start this up again. This really *isn't* a horse slaughter group. What I most resent is the way PETA has succeeded in pirating the agenda and making this very marginal topic *THE* most debated horse topic everywhere from here on Ridecamp to the floor of the US Congress. And now that they've gotten their law passed, they've made the pretend crisis into a *real* crisis. So, I really kind of hope John and Steph kill this thread. In the meantime, I shall behave badly and offer this *new* observation: ------------ The population "bubble" of horses foaled during the equestrian baby boom of pre-1987 is now on the ebb. By this I mean, all breeds had major overproduction prior to 1987 due to the IRS's "passive loss" provision that allowed people to write off their recreational horse expenses (thinly disguised as a "business") against their main (non-horse) income, without even participating actively in the business. Post 1987, equine production plunged. I know that the American Morgan Horse Association was registering about 8000 Morgans a year before the IRS change. That nose-dived to about 3000 in just two years! The catastrophe in the Arabian breed was even worse. All those horses are now 20+ years old, past their reproductive years, and themselves dying at an accelerating rate--or being sold for final slaughter. I'm not a population statistician, so I'd have a hard time guessing what the actual distribution of ages across the entire population of horses in the US really is, but at this point in time there are a *lot* more equine senior citizens than there will be five or ten years from now, and the last twenty years has seen far more fertile mares producing a hobby foal-or-two than will be the case in the next twenty years. (Dampening wave.) Which is a long way of saying that a large part of the problem is solving itself.. ------------- Linda Marins =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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