The US Government is Sending Wild Horses to Slaughter so Cattle Can Graze for $1.35

The United States government is sending wild horses to slaughter. In March the Bureau of Land Management took 68 mustangs that had never been saddled, trucked them 1,800 miles from a feedlot in Idaho to a livestock pen in Ohio, and sold them for twenty five dollars a head. The next night two double decker cattle trucks pulled up at midnight and took them away. Nobody will say where.The BLM is warehousing about 63,000 horses it chased down with helicopters, at more than a hundred million dollars a year. That is two thirds of the program’s entire budget, and the government says last year’s sales saved it fifty six million.So ask why they are in pens in the first place. The BLM manages 245 million acres. Cattle graze 155 million of them. Wild horses get 26.9 million, and they share that with the cattle. Ranchers pay a dollar thirty five a month per cow and calf, the lowest price the law allows, while comparable private pasture runs about twenty three dollars. We cleared a national symbol off the range to make room for the cheapest beef in America, then billed ourselves a hundred million a year to store the evidence.Now, slaughtering a wild horse has been a federal crime since 1971. But in 2004 Senator Conrad Burns of Montana slipped a rider into a 3,300 page spending bill saying that once one of these horses is sold, it is no longer legally a wild horse. The protection doesn’t follow the animal. It ends at the sale. The buyer signs a contract promising not to kill it or knowingly sell it to anyone who will, then sells it to a middleman who signed nothing at all. That is the whole loophole. One signature wide.The biggest buyer in the country is an Ohio livestock trader named Brandon Jones, who took around five hundred mustangs. He told the New York Times he never advertised them, never put up a for sale sign, and moved nearly all of them almost immediately, which means the buyers were lined up before the horses arrived. He also knew five regional slaughter traders by name and could quote the going price of horse meat. My dude, that is not a coincidence, that is a customer list. He denies selling to slaughter.Four of his mustangs surfaced at a Tennessee auction that slaughter buyers work. A trainer called the BLM and told them. About a week later the agency sent him 68 more horses. Are you fecking kidding me. Canadian border inspectors have since photographed horses wearing government brands on trailers headed north.None of this is new. In 2015 Interior’s own Inspector General caught a Colorado buyer who took roughly 1,700 mustangs, told the BLM they were going to good homes, and shipped them to Mexico. The U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute. So did the local DA. Nobody was charged, which is how you get a sequel.Dave Philipps at the New York Times pulled the records. The BLM didn’t answer his questions, but it did put out a press release in February bragging about the record sales year. Every animal placed in a good home, it said, is a win for the animals and the taxpayer.A good home. Twenty five dollars and a cattle truck at midnight, so a cow can eat for a dollar thirty five.Sources:Reporting by Dave Philipps at the New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/us/trump-wild-horses-legal-loophole-slaughter.html?smid=nytcore-ios-sharehttps://www.blm.gov/blog/2026-02-12/wild-horse-and-burro-adoptions-and-sales-climbed-fiscal-year-2025-reducing-longhttps://www.blm.gov/programs/wild-horse-and-burro/about-the-program/myths-and-facts Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe