The Humane Society of the United States released a statement on March 16 stating that recent claims that thousands of horses have been abandoned in Kentucky are unfounded, and is calling it a campaign of fear mongering by a foreign-owned horse slaughter industry that is on its last legs in the United States. The Society stated proponents of horse slaughter frequently alarm the public about wanton abandonment to raise false and baseless concerns about a proposed ban on horse slaughter for human consumption.

At the annual meeting of the Kentucky Animal Care and Control Association March 16, the organization’s president, Dan Evans, surveyed the membership about the situation. None reported an increase in abandoned horse reports or sightings.

"The notion that Kentucky is overrun with unwanted horses is absurd," said Pam Rogers, Kentucky State Program Coordinator for The Humane Society of the United States, who was at the meeting. "We are a state of horse lovers, and we want to protect our horses from being butchered and exported to foreign countries where horse meat is considered a delicacy. These claims made by the horse slaughter industry’s lobbyists have no basis. This is just plain rumor mongering."

The reports surfaced after a federal appeals court decision closed down two horse slaughter plants in Texas. Equine welfare experts report that the horses bound for the Texas slaughter plants are now being shipped to a plant in Mexico to be killed. The only horse slaughter plant still operating in the United States–in DeKalb, Illinois–is importing horses from Canada for slaughter, underscoring the point that there is no surplus of horses available in the United States, the Society said