What Sound Does a Lemming Make?

Sometimes you encounter levels of stupidity so high you just don’t know where to start.  However, it seems so important to correct the misinformation being put out there by the mouthpieces of these broker owned programs so that intelligent human beings who seek the truth will find it.

Over the last few days we’ve watched some of these women (who apparently have nothing else to do with their days except endlessly post their uneducated assumptions) really step up to the misinformation cliff and lead their lemmings over the edge.

While the Broker Owned Programs are constantly vying for each other’s supporter’s dollars by coming up with a better sad story than the last, the jackpot just may have been achieved in emotional blackmail by portraying horses loading onto trucks and proclaiming them lost to slaughter.  We got to see the sad pictures of several who were “shipped” a few weeks ago, and last week the tale was told of four more being “loaded” despite promises of cash and it was even alleged that Brian Moore tried to get them off the truck after he’d sent them on their way.  Yes, and unicorns fly.

It’s been said before, but these brokers like Rotz and Moore have many outlets for their horses.  Gail Christman, of Venture Farms in Germansville is just one of the places Moore shuffles horses to:

http://www.horsetopia.com/for-sale/horsefarm.cfm/farm16891.html

Remember Steppins High Beauty?  She was being sold by both a BO program and Venture Farms at the same time.  And it’s not the first time we’ve heard that story, is it?

The also load them onto trucks and take them to other auctions.  The horses being purchased for these programs are largely unsuitable for slaughter.  As we’ve stated numerous times in the past, these purported rescues have simply created a whole new market for the brokers with horses they would not have bought to ship to slaughter.  The broker gets his cut, the “rescuer” gets hers and the money clips get a little thicker.  Many people are catching on to this ruse, so they’ve now developed this latest emotional blackmail of  showing horses getting on trucks and assuring everyone they’ve died a horrible death because they were unable to collect enough cash.

Where does this leave the legitimate rescues, with vetted and evaluated horses?  Sigh.  They simply cannot compete with this kind of heart wrenching drama.

Of course a number of enlightened human beings saw through the ruse and called these lovely ladies on it.  That caused a tantrum among the mouthpieces that has been going on for days.  We are going to show you a few of their comments and correct the fallacies they are spreading.   There is either a total lack of education or else a carefully orchestrated attempt at continuing to keep the blind donors, well, blind.

Fallacy #1: Fallacy #1: This statement was made in response to Brian’s alleged request to get horses off a truck he had already shipped:

                Horses are not released once they enter the slaughter house. Consider the basic fact that the horses are received in a sealed truck at the Canada border. Consider the fact that the horses do not need health certificates.  They are only shipped with coggins.

We can have a field day with this one.  Horses do NOT ship with Coggins.  They do ship with several pieces of paperwork.  The VS 10-13 is the manifest that shows all the horses on a load.  Each horse also has to have an EID form (http://www.kistlivestockauction.com/horse_eid/Canada_Horse_EID_Form.pdf).

Before being loaded on a truck, each and every horse is inspected by an independent veterinarian.  The, a second veterinarian inspects the load, one who is certified and compensated by the USDA.  NO COGGINS REQUIRED.  Both vets are required to sign off on the horses, assuring they "certify" the horses are physically able to be shipped to slaughter.

The truck is not "sealed."  The horses are off loaded and inspected at the border.  Some are rejected and end up on other farms and holding areas.

Fallacy #2: The next two equine experts stepped up and said:

                Not to long ago I heard a wild tale of two TB's that supposedly made it off the Canadian slaughter house floor. I knew it was BS as did most people. I think it was just another sham to scam money and make a name.

That would be cafe cactus and canuki?

Cactus Café and Canuki were very much rescued from Richelieu.  Here is just one of many articles on the pair:

http://www.drf.com/news/banned-trainer-pleads-his-case-anti-slaughter-policy

Their trainer, Mark Wedig, is who consigned them to slaughter:

In an Aug. 21 interview, Wedig said he never intended to sell the pair to slaughter and that he was unaware that Bauer, to whom he sold the horses, was a well-known agent for the Richelieu plant.
 

After horse welfare advocates raised the alarm about the horses’ whereabouts and the search began to generate publicity, Wedig started getting calls from horse advocates. He said he called Bauer, who told him Canuki and Cactus Cafe had shipped to Canada.

“I contacted the firm up there to purchase them back,” Wedig said. “It’s never been done, and it’s extremely hard.”

Wedig said he “can’t reveal” specifically what he did to retrieve the horses and said that when Bauer gave him Richelieu’s phone number, “at that time I didn’t know what it was.” Wedig said Richelieu was “very accommodating,” and he drove his trailer to Quebec to pick the horses up from a holding pen. 

The really sad part of the endless blathering of these mouthpieces is that some of the lemmings continue to follow them and their misinformation over the cliff.  None of them live in close proximity to the rescue they so ardently defend.  None of them have ever picked up a brush and helped care for the poor horses trapped on that barren dry lot.  The laugh disrespectfully about the FBI and joke about “calling Charlene.”  

Not one of them commented when Jennifer gave birth to a dead foal.  Any tears for her dead baby?  Any shock that Snuffy ran loose mounting mares for months before being gelded?

No tears, no remorse, no shock, just uneducated drama queens looking for the next person to blame their troubles on.  They’ve certainly secured their place on the Karma Bus.  It’s going to be delightful to see their reactions when it arrives.

###########

For the horses killed this week our hearts are heavy.  RIP dear souls. 

The Shipping Details of Brian Moore, Horse Kill Buyer

Here is the long promised analysis of the shipping paperwork of Brian Moore, kill buyer and horse dealer from Jonestown, Pennsylvania.  While the most recent information was requested, it is difficult to be sure of some of the shipping dates as Moore seems to submit paperwork that isn’t dated, by and large, and apparently the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is unbothered by that detail.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1L4NjWCxTJ3RmRraG9QazlWbFk/edit

(you’ll need to download it and it’s a large file)

The sobering note is, that these 790 pages of paperwork document the slaughterhouse deaths of 7,140 equines.

Rest in peace.

Of those 7,100 plus horses, only 18 were documented as ponies.

38 were gray horses.  That translates into 1% of the horses Moore ships.

153 were documented as drafts, which is 2% of his shipping numbers.

The number of Thoroughbreds he’s shipping is significant.  He listed 800.  That amounts to 11% of what he ships.

Most folks know Moore and other local kill buyers have their direct to kill pens – the horses that come off that backside and never get run through auctions.  And Moore’s farm is in very close proximity to Penn National.  Of course not all of those TBs came directly off the track, but considering Penn Gaming’s zero tolerance policy, makes you wonder how many did, doesn’t it?

A few other things of note.  We’ve all heard dozens of times that once the horses are tagged and on the manifest, they cannot be pulled off.  In this particular case there are numerous cases where a horse is listed, then a line is put through the listing and it says “not on the load.”  Take a look at pages 476, 505, 546, 629, 638, 709, 713 – and there are others.

On page 534 they slipped in a page from Leroy Baker.  Note he shipped a mustang, and four horses listed on his load didn’t get shipped.

Now it’s possible these horses were rejected at the border, but it certainly belies the assertion that they are absolutely gone once tagged, or written up – you know the mantra.  We can’t be sure why those horses were removed from the load.

So repeat after me --- Brian Moore doesn’t ship ponies to slaughter, especially minis, week after week after week as the broker owned programs are telling you.  And he rarely ships gray horses – one in one hundred.  Very few drafts are shipped by him – two out of a hundred.

What he does like is the big, healthy, beefy quarter horses.  And lots of horses listed in the “other” category, which is likely a lot of Standardbreds and Paints, breeds of good flesh and less bone.  The horses you never see on the broker owned pages.  Consigned to their deaths without a chance because they are healthy and will yield lots of good meat.

Lots of thoughts swirl through your head after looking over the documentation.   But horse dealers are horse dealers, right?  Some folks call them unwanted horses, but for these dealers they are very much wanted, and will make good use of them, dead or alive.

Brazen Washington State Feedlot Program Feels No Shame

Being a predominately east coast group, we don’t often think about what is happening on the west coast.  That’s particularly true because there is so much mayhem taking place over here.  This article is over a year old, but boy there are some telling facts here.  

http://www.insidebainbridge.com/2012/02/04/wa-horse-rescue-operation-suspected-of-fraud-with-kill-buy-horses-destined-for-slaughter/

The horses are at a Zillah-based feedlot owned by Chuck Walker.  Here’s an all too familiar story that is part of the article:

Rebels Equine Feedlot Sales (REFS), an organization that works with Walker’s Gary Seals Livestock, routinely sends out email alerts to animal adoption websites and Craigslist featuring photos and descriptions of healthy, highly adoptable horses at the feedlot, with a plea for intervention to prevent their imminent slaughter. Samantha Milbredt’s phone number and the website url for REFS are listed as the contacts for people interested in rescuing the horses. REFS states on their website that the animals they list for rescue “have been purchased by the feedlot owner for the purpose of re-sale to the Bovary Slaughterhouse in Canada,” where horse slaughter has been legal for years. It explains that Mildredt “has been given permission by the feedlot owner to assess and advertise the horses in the hope of seeing them safe in the hands of new owners.” What it doesn’t say is that the horses on the feedlot offered for “rescue” are sold to horse-loving buyers at significantly higher prices than Walker purchases them for from the kill buyers, often $600 or $700 each.

According to one horse advocacy source too frightened of retaliation to be named, who broke down in tears of despair and frustration, the healthy horses featured for sale in the photos often get sent on to slaughter because they return a higher profit for their meat. Some of the well-intentioned horse purchasers, who usually pay by cashier’s check or cash up front are presented with a different horse once they arrive to pick up the one they thought they were rescuing. Once buyers show up, they may be told that the horse they thought they were buying was kicked or hurt in some way and therefore sent to slaughter due to lameness, and they are offered another horse also “lined up for imminent slaughter.” Typically the horse they are offered turns out to be old and/or diseased and therefore not worth a good slaughterhouse price. According to our source, these horses are sometimes shot up with steroids to appear temporarily healthier and younger than they are.

Samantha Panayotopulos Milbredt is one of three people who run the website Rebels Equine Feedlot Sales (http://rebelsequinefeedlotsales.orgThere is no registered business in the State of Washington with that name. Milbredt is the registered owner of the Washington for-profit corporation Camelot Farms Inc., a boarding facility, and she is the sole proprietor of Columbia Basin Equine Rescue, also a for-profit business.

If you go on to finish reading the lengthy article, it’s very disturbing.  Here’s an article where Sam Milbredt is interviewed:

http://www.insidebainbridge.com/tag/zillah-based-feedlot/

A few excerpts that nearly knocked us off our rockers:

I asked Milbredt how much money Walker makes from each sale of a horse. She calculated that he often spends $25 on a horse at auction, and the average horse will sell for $500 through Rebels. Milbredt tacks on another $100-$150 to cover the costs of her work, her phone charges involved in the transaction, her travel the 40 miles each way to the feedlot, and the hiring of a rider to test the horse. This brings the average cost to $625.

She said that it’s financially beneficial to Walker if he can sell a horse through REFS and not have to pay the cost to ship it to Canada for slaughter. She said, “There’s no doubt about it. He makes more selling it off.”

Then Milbredt returned to my original question about purchasing horses directly at auction. She said, “Absolutely. The rescue people should go directly to the auction to get horses. I think money usually brings out the worst in people. I’m just covering my expenses. There is no right or wrong way to rescue a horse. Who cares how you do it as long you’re saving horses?” She added, “Why is there a rescue Nazi who says you have to do it a certain way?”

Milbredt seemed confused by the controversy surrounding her. She said to me, “I go to church. I go to counseling. I’m a really, really good person. ”

Ah, the “Church” card.  How many times have we heard that played?

And most recently, Shedrowconfessions, an awesome blog, weighed in on the esteemed Samantha Milbredt.

http://shedrowconfessions.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/further-proof-how-awesome-kill-buyers-and-feedlot-brokers-are/

Rebels Equine Feedlot Sales operates out of the Pacific Northwest and pretty much exclusively deals with kill buyer, Chuck Walker.  It is run by Sam Milbredt with the help of Helen Love and Cindy Dolowy.  Love and Dolowy would tell you they are anti-slaughter, but you know the old saying about laying down with dogs and ending up with fleas…REFS is their current operating name, but many people would probably remember them better as Columbia Basin Equine Rescue and all the scams they ran under that name.  You only need to take a quick tour around the fugly horse blog to get an idea on the types of scams Sam has run in the past.  Here’s a link to start you off (http://fuglyblog.com/2011/01/17/keep-it-up-a-whole-new-generation-of-suckers-are-being-born/) Some of their past antics have included: misrepresenting listed horses, sending diseased horses into new homes, sending bailed horses to slaughter without telling anybody, bullet euthanized other horses that were paid for by sponsors without consulting them, placed numerous horses in unsuitable homes including placing some with somebody that sexually abused them.  Yes, you read that last part right.  They don’t give a shit about where those horses go or what happens to them and nothing has changed from one name change to another.  

These groups marketing and placing horses that have sadly fallen into the hands of traders all seem to share the same play book.  This brazen broad, Milbredt, openly admits to making significant profit for both herself and the feedlot owner.  And it’s clearly noted that the healthier horses are the ones shipped to slaughter!  If you think the other broker owned programs are any different, than we’ve got some beach front property in Arizona we’d like to show you.