I disagree with placing blame on back yard breeding as a problem for overpopulation of horses. I disagree that slaughter plants are needed to dispose of dead horses. Rendering plants handle the job better. It's a better alternative.

Large horse farms with multiple stallions breeding a hundred or more mares when only a small percentage of the get are trained for competition. This leaves hundreds of horses to dispose of.

By using just one industry the Cutting Horse Association industry to demonstrate how many more hundreds of horses are bred compared to a few backyard breedings. Upper level cutting horses compete only until the age of 6. Training begins at 2 when their backs are unable to handle the rigorous training. Several break down before the age of three or two. Hundreds never make it to training at all, they get passed around. They are crooked legged, ugly, bad dispositions, etc. 

The cutting horse industry does not breed for beauty, only performance. You get hundreds of  horses with terrible defects.

Trainers cheat during competition by drugging lame horsess and so on. These criples, young horses ages between 4 and 6 eventually have to find homes. Owners and trainers are not in the business of keeping 10, 20, 50 to 100 hundred horses bred on one farm while the next crop is arrives.

The slaugher houses are not needed. Renderers are.

Back yard breeders are not to blame for overbreeding. Visit one upper level Cutting Horse farm and take a look around. Stallions with very crooked legs, various defects, with inherited genetic problems like Herda,  are bred based on a few years worth of performance points and some of those points earned artificially.

As for stallion breed wardens, we have those within breed associations. Breed associations have criteria for stallion prospects. If this breed association rule is violated and not enforced there is not need to demand an independent, state or national breed stallion wardens. We need to pressure associations to do the right thing and follow association rules.

For example it took years for the AQHA and APHA to forbid stallions with HYPP to be bred. They finally have. Yet, myself and many others, never stopped petitioning that they do so from the start. Greed was the only motive anyone could fathom for the continuous deliberate breeding of HYPP positive horses afflicting hundreds of innocent animals to a horrendous fatal defect.

We don't need warden police, slaughter horses or to blame a back yard breeder. We need an educated and noble-minded America which is not constantly driven to take easy money and to make short-sighted wrong-headed, stupid decisions about the care of horses.

It would be helpful to have a source to back up the claim that the horse slaughter market determines the price of horses.

The largest horseownership in the US is the trail/recreational market  and it has been in decline for years. The reasons are varied and complicated. The American Horse Council for instance claims to represent horse owners.  But at the Equine Species Working Group established for discussions with the USDA on implementing the NAIS of the 35 members only one represented the majority horse ownership. On the otherhand, there is heavy representation from the racing industry. When the AHC makes the claim that they are there: "To promote and protect the equine industry by representing its interests in Congress and in federal regulatory agencies on national issues of importance; " It's not exactly honest.

The racing industry drives the meme that the closing of slaughter plants has resulted in a drop in prices -- not for them of course --  and a increase in abandoned horses. Neither has been proven to have a connection to the closing of the plants. The problem existed before and has to do with a lack of education and other issues. The high cost of land, cost of living, jobs going overseas, job layoffs, family problems, etc.

If the local rendering plants were brought back (or the knacker as in England) it would provide local employment and a market of the product. This is more beneficial and realistic.

If the racing industry was not so hindered by c hoices they make they would not be launching the campaign to re-open the slaughter plants using the disingenious meme that horses are unwanted and prices have dropped because of the closures -- not for them, I repeat.

If the racing industry was more honest and had more concern for the American economy they would open local rendering plants and euthenize, on the farm, those horses they would ordinarily send to the slaughter alive .