Representatives Ed Whitfield (R-Kentucky) and Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia) introduced a bill on Friday that would restore a 34-year ban on the commercial sale and slaughter of free-roaming horses and burros.

The bill, HR 249, would reinstitute federal protections that ban the sale and slaughter of wild horses and burros for human consumption overseas. Similar legislation was passed in May as an amendment to the House Interior Appropriations bill, but was stripped from the final bill in a House-Senate conference committee.

“In this country, horses are raised as work, sport, and companion animals and have never been part of the food chain,” Whitfield said. “The industry claims banning horse slaughter will lead to a proliferation of abandoned and neglected horses and that horses being sent to slaughter are old and unwanted. Nothing could be further from the truth. Less than 1% of the total horse population is sent to slaughter, a percentage easily absorbed.”

Two plants in Texas and one in DeKalb, Illinois, slaughtered more than 90,000 horses in 2005, according to the National Horse Protection website.

“Horses are an integral part of the tapestry of this country, and Americans have always championed their survival and expect they will be protected,” Rahall said. “The time has long since passed to restore the prohibition on the sale and slaughter of wild, free-roaming horses and burros, and I urge the Congress to heed the will of American public and respond to common decency by supporting this legislation. We owe no less to these living symbols of the American west.”

The House of Representatives voted 263-146 on September 7 in favor of a bill that would ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption. But the Senate failed to take any action on the legislation before the previous Congressional session concluded December 9.

“The slaughtering of America’s horses is a betrayal of our responsibility to animals who are symbols of the American spirit,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and chief executive officer of the The Humane Society of the United States. “We’re grateful to Representatives Rahall and Whitfield for their tireless efforts to help bring an end to the misery and suffering of these iconic and majestic animals, and we pledge to work with them until we put the foreign-owned slaughterhouses out of business.”