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This whole topic is a minefield. There are two distinct positions and in my opinion neither one is right or wrong.
One position is that horses are a special catagory of animal and should not be part or the food chain or disposed of prematurely for any reason.
The other position is that, although they hold a special place in the hearts of many of us, they are still animals and should be managed as such.
Both positions can be defended in a million different ways and very few people will EVER be convinced to switch camps.
There are probably homes for the numbers of animals coming off the track, but there are is not a home for every animal coming off the track. What is the difference?? While the number of homes out there is sufficient the number of homes willing to take a horse that is no longer useful is very limited. It is one thing to care for a "pasture ornament" for years when you have an emotional attachement the animal and quite anther to take one on that you have no attachement to and know you are taking on a significant financial burden without any chance of ever getting any real use out of the animal.
The average fan looks at the big money races and the millionaire owners and sees no reason for any horse to not have a nice retirement home. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the people in horse racing are not millionairs and do not make a profit from the endeavor. Finding a decent home for their animals or disposing of them in a humane manner is not too much to ask of any of them. Asking them to continue to feed every horse they own at the time it comes to the end of its career until it passes away of natural causes is in fact too much to ask and is simply not feesable.
Banning slaughter all together simply makes the over all problem more difficult. Many mares end up being bred simply becuase they are not good for anything else and people try to get some use out of them. "If I have to feed them I may as well breed them". But, the mare is not of good enough quality to pay a big stud fee and so they are bred to stallions that should be geldings in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle. This just adds to the over population and drags down the over all quality of the breed.
I have fed horses of my own that have outlived their real usefulness for an additional ten years, but I would not take on a "strange" horse and do that. I have taken sound horeses off the track and retrained them and found homes for them but it is a money losing propisition in most cases and you have to put up with a LOT of well meaning people that think you are trying to get the horese to sell to the killers (and they often make up lots of stuff that is just not true in order to get other people to not let you take their horeses).
As much as I love horses, I am of the opinion that the best solution is really to allow horeses to be disposed of. The manner should be very closely regulated to assure the humane treatment of the animals during the process and perhaps a part of that process could be making any of them that are still physically able to be of some use available to homes for a specific period of time prior to them being disposed of. This would allow those looking to retrain a sound animal a central place to locate one and remove the possibility that they were simply taking it to go someplace else and dispose of it. In my opinion this would reduce the population in general and improve the quaility of the breed by taking some of the mares out of the breeding population that should not really be there anyway. If regulated properly it would also put an end to the inhumane treatment that some of the animals are being subjected to currently.
This is all just off the top of my head and based on my personal knowledge and experience. I know that it will NOT be well received by the people that object to any disposal of horses but I believe that this kind of a system would be much more acceptable than some of what is taking place today.
Ok I am braced for the outpouring of negative feedback that will most likely now occur.
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