Wild horses have been slaughtered at Cavel International’s DeKalb plant and the horse-loving community aims to stop it.

For the love of Christmas, why?

The reality of the wild mustang problem, and it is a problem, is not a pretty picture.

According to a PBS documentary, “Wild Horses: An American Romance” soon after horses were protected by Congress in 1971 their numbers began to grow out of control.

The same documentary stated during average years, wild horse population increases by 18 to 20 percent, 40 percent in the best years.

What this means is other species, some endangered, are forced to compete with the wild mustangs for habitat and other resources.

Slaughtering some of these horses is similar to hunting white tail deer populations. Without this solution the animals would roam rampant and face starvation.

Even rounding up the extra horses and moving them to protected lands has not worked in the past, as the PBS documentary points out.

Contraceptives offer promise for controlling wild horse populations, but as Penn State Agricultural Magazine pointed out in 2003, contraception into wild populations presents far more problems than experimenting on domestic animals. Unlike domestic horses, wild horses will not sit idly by while they are given contraceptives; they must be captured to receive the treatment.

What it comes down to is wild horses, like other invasive species, must be culled in some manner. By allowing some of the overpopulated horses to be slaughtered, some benefit can be had.

The United States Congress repealed the federal ban on slaughtering wild horses in December. While horse meat cannot be consumed in the United States it can be processed and slaughtered.

The meat will be consumed, instead of rotting away after a horse has starved to death. Jobs will continue to be provided by companies such as Cavel and the business they receive will continue to benefit the local economy.

Slaughtering wild horses must continue to be allowed. If it is not, America may find itself dealing with wild mustangs in the same way Australia deals with wild camels – flying over them in helicopters and shooting them from the air. That is humane, is it not?