The President's message was heard in this household with heartfelt joy. In both public appearances and social media forums, he hammered hard at Congress to pass the SAFE Act.
"I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed," he threatened.
And good for him. The SAFE Act has lingered in Congress long enough. The SAFE Act has bipartisan support and would ban once and for all the end of the sale, purchase, and transport of horses for the slaughter trade. There is no significant opposition within the …
Sorry. You there in the back, waving your hand. What's that you say? The President was referring to the SAVE Act, not the SAFE Act? But, but ... what's the SAVE Act? And how could it be more important than ending the butcher's pipeline for North American Thoroughbreds?
Google was called on for help. "The SAFE Act" was entered, and up came the SAVE Act, or Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which is what the President was apparently talking about, and not horse slaughter. My mistake. For emphasis, the President calls it the "SAVE America Act," which doubles up on the America angle, always effective. Just like "ATM machine."
In addition to the SAVE Act, Google offered the following options:
- The Security and Freedom Enhancement Act (SAFE), designed as a modification of aspects of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
- The Stopping Addiction and Falls for the Elderly Act (SAFE again), and who would vote against that?
- New York legislators considered the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (also SAFE), which sounds good on paper.
- And then there was the Securing America's Federal Elections Act (SAFE as SAFE could be), a bill that made the Congressional rounds in 2019 without becoming law.
There once was a SAFE Act before Congress addressing the slaughter issue that stood for Safeguard American Food Exports. That went nowhere.
The most important SAFE Act—currently in the hopper at the House of Representatives—was introduced more than a decade ago. It stands for Save America's Forgotten Equines. Should the proposed legislation become law (as forcefully urged by Bill Finley in a recent edition of Thoroughbred Daily News), the eventual results would be a withering of the kill pens feeding the slaughter pipeline to Canada, Mexico, and abroad, as well as a forced retirement of the killer buyers lurking around the back gates of America's racetracks, trolling for horses in the "care" of the morally compromised.
Animal protection lobbyist Chris Heyde, as noted often in this space, has been the point man pounding the halls of Congress in service of the SAFE Act. His quest dates back decades. Tireless is not his middle name, but it should be. At the moment, Heyde is hard at work making sure the annual anti-slaughter workaround that defunds inspections of horse slaughter facilities contained in the massive appropriations process is secure again.
The SAFE Act, sponsored by Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Florida Republican, has been co-sponsored by 226 members of the current House of Representatives, well clear of the 218 needed for passage, if it ever came to a straight-up vote. To hear Heyde tell it, though, getting a bill to a straightforward vote is like wandering the maze in "The Shining." There are far more dead ends than doors.
"It's not that we don't have the votes and the support," Heyde said. "It's that we get caught by timing and politics that have nothing to do with the merits of the bill."
There appears to be three fronts on which supporters of the bill can fight:
- Movement of the delayed Farm Bill out of the Committee on Agriculture to the floor of the House could allow for the provisions of the SAFE Act to be attached as an amendment. Still, the overarching bill would need to pass the Senate.
- The addition of an "evergreen" provision to the annual defunding of horse slaughterhouse inspections. This would at least make the annual defunding automatic for ongoing appropriations cycles. Backers of the evergreen provision sent the committee a letter of support containing the signatures of 155 members of the House.
"We've introduced that change the last two years," Heyde said. "There's precedent to add the evergreen provision to the defunding of an appropriations item."
- If the Republican majority in Congress moves for a reconciliation bill to end the current partial government shutdown, the SAFE Act could be attached.
"Those bills usually have to do with budgetary issues, and horse slaughter inspection is clearly a federally regulated program that we need to get off the books," Heyde said.
Chances of the SAFE Act ever receiving a stand-alone vote in the House rest somewhere between none and more none. The act rests peacefully these days in the Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Subcommittee of the Committee on Agriculture, which is headed by chairman Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican. The subcommittee is populated by a number of representatives from states with strong agribusiness lobbies and cattle interests who maintain that an outright ban on the horse slaughter trade would be a slippery slope for other meat producers.
This is not true, of course, because horses are not bred for their meat. They do have commercial value, but as performance and companion animals. To subject their end lives to the horrors of slaughter transport is a violation of the responsibilities taken on by human stewardship.
In 2025, the number of horses exported from the United States to nations filling the appetite for la viande de cheval (why do terrible things sound better in French?) rose by 5,000 head to 25,000.
"It's a matter of demand," Heyde said. "It's not like somebody goes to the border with a trailer full of horses and says, 'Anybody want them?' There continues to be a market that U.S. horses satisfy."
It has been Heyde's ongoing commitment to find a powerful voice that could rise up from the world of Thoroughbred racing and cut through all the Washington red tape. That's not likely to happen, but there are capable, connected people in charge of the organizations that steer the game in its many directions.
Drew Fleming of Breeders' Cup, Lisa Lazarus of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, Everett Dobson of The Jockey Club, Tom Rooney of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Mike Anderson of Churchill Downs Inc., Belinda Stronach of 1/ST Racing, and David O'Rourke of the New York Racing Association could be the fingers in a powerful fist aimed at the passage, somehow, of the most important SAFE Act of them all.
Then, after all these years, American Thoroughbreds finally would be saved from the slaughter trade.
