Jacksonville/Orange Park Rally to Fight for the Survival of Horses & Burros
The Jacksonville/Orange Park rally will be held on Saturday, April 25th, from 11 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at the Boot Barn, 249 Kingsley Avenue, Orange Park. This rally is one of many rallies around the world to Fight for the Survival of our Horses and Burros. The rally is to raise public awareness of our wild horses & burros and slaughter bound horses and to #StopTheRoundups and #EndHorslaughter.
ORANGE PARK, FLORIDA, April 27, 2015 (Newswire.com) - The Jacksonville/Orange Park rally will be held on Saturday, April 25th, from 11 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at the Boot Barn, 249 Kingsley Avenue, Orange Park. This rally is one of many rallies being held around the world as part of the International Rally to Fight for the Survival of our Horses and Burros.
The rally is to #StopTheRoundups and #EndHorseSlaughter. The goal is to raise public awareness of the plight of our wild horses & burros and slaughter bound horses.
"It is time that our tax dollars were used to humanely manage our wild horses on our lands, instead of paying millions annually to contractors to round up our horses with helicopters - including a contractor convicted of illegally capturing and sending our wild horses to slaughter."
Valerie Pittman, Rally Organizer
Amendments in 1996 and 2004 to the "Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act" drastically changed the intent of the WHBA to allow the use of motorized vehicles during roundups and sale without limitation. The wild horse roundups are cruel, costly and deadly, there are hundreds of wild horses and burros in holding that are not being provided protective cover by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and many thousands more that need good adopters.
Over 100,000 horses a year are transported to slaughter, including many mares torn away from foals that are left behind to die in a feedlot. These horses suffer unimaginable cruelty and severe injuries, before, during and after the transport to the slaughter facility. Slaughter is not humane euthanasia.
On April 22nd, 2015, Representative Frank C. Guinta (R-NH) introduced H.R. 1942, a federal bill “To prevent human health threats posed by the consumption of equines raised in the United States”. H.R. 1942 was co-sponsored by Florida Representatives Vern Buchanan (R-FL16), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27), David W. Jolly (R-FL13) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL23). We are encouraging everyone to personally contact their U.S. Representatives to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 1942 and to request that they introduce legislation to repeal amendments to the WHBA and to contact Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio and ask them to do the same in the Senate.