PITTSBURGH -- A Team 4 investigation gets results.
The Pennsylvania Senate unanimously approved a bill Thursday aimed at treating horses more humanely.
The bill outlaws the use of double-deck trailers. Critics say that horses are crushed inside the trailers.
Team 4 investigator Paul Van Osdol broke the story in April. Here is his follow-up report:
The double-deck trailers are commonly used by so-called killer buyers -- those who are selling horses to slaughterhouses.
As we first reported, Pennsylvania is one of the leaders when it comes to turning horses into meat. That's why it took five years for the bill to be passed.
Van Osdol showed that standard horse trailer provides plenty of head room, but a double-decker trailer does not. Van Osdol said that the double-deckers are built for cows and pigs, not horses.
Hidden cameras captured pictures of horses being packed tightly intoa trailer. A handler is shown whipping horses in the face to get them inside.
The horses are all headed to slaughterhouses, and the people who sell them have spent years fighting any efforts by legislators to change the way they're treated.
"These people that made those rules, it wouldn't take long for them to see the light," said horse auction owner Roy Baker. "Sunday morning when they get home for church, these 40 kill-horses standing there crippled or half blind, let them put them in their yard and take care of them and then they'd see the way."
But critics say even if the horses are eventually slaughtered, that's no excuse to treat them inhumanely.
State Representative Jim Lynch sponsored the bill to ban the double-deck trailers.
"I think we need to be more humane, Lynch said. "What kind of society are we that we can treat anything living like that and cause it pain unneccesarily?"
The bill passed the house and the senate unanimously. Gov. Tom Ridge is expected to sign it. Horse rescue groups say that the bill gives Pennsylvania the toughest law in the country when it comes to transporting horses.
Copyright 2007 by ThePittsburghChannel. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
