My goal in life, its not to earn the highest marks or to get the art award, its not to be able to save up enough money to buy a horse, although this would all be nice. My real goal in life is to stop horse slaughter. Ive decided to do some extra credit by informing you, my classmates, about horse slaughter. Some horse slaughter is good, some times the horse is sick or lame and it wouldnt be fair to keep it alive. Its fine to sell the horse for meat then, most people dont have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is the fact that innocent horses are being slaughtered for no reason at all. These horses are bought at auctions for the meat prices, which is less then a thousand dollars. Isnt that awful, these horses could be used as childrens mounts or could be a great racing champion one day!

Now youre probably thinking, all we have to do to stop this problem is to tell the owners not to sell at auctions, right? Wrong, the horse owners have probably already tried to sell their horses in classified adds with no luck, they might not have enough money to keep the horse until a buyer can buy it, horses cost a fortune. So if the owners cant find a good place to sell to then they will just give it away to the auctions. One major target for meat buyers is the St Jacobs livestocks exchange, Ive been there myself and it was gruesome! On my way in I had to pass a dead cow, which was lying near a garbage can, the look in its eyes was frightening... almost as though it needed help. When I went inside the auction, some of the horses were abused and one pretty mare had hurt her leg badly and could barely walk, it was only a little bit of swelling which could have been fixed over a couple weeks of hosing it down. The meat buyers had their cold hearts set on her, just because she was a large horse, they even out bid two girls my age, who had really wanted her. After the horses are purchased by meat buyers, they will travel squashed together in stock trailers to the slaughter house. One thing which really upsets me is the way they put the horse down, they arent just put to sleep when they get to the slaughter house, instead they are shoved into a small box stall, stunned with a bullet to the head, and then hung to bleed to death. Canada has banned horse meat being eaten but we still ship to Japan and other countries, why do we do this? If we could put a limit on the amount of meat we export from Canada, then the slaughter houses wouldnt be in such competition to get so many horses. You wouldnt want to kill your dog or cat, would you? Is it right to be selling animals who are great companions, fun to ride, amazing to watch, and who even proved therapy for people with leg problems, for meat? I dont think it is, and I hope you all agree with me.