Horses Mysterioulsy Being Slaughtered, Horse Owners in Miami-Dade County on Edge

First we had a wayward teenager killing cats in Florida, now we have someone slaughtering horses in Miami-Dade county. What is going on? Police have said that since January, at least 17 horses have been butchered and their carcasses left on roadsides, or in stalls or rural pastures. The suspicion is that the meat is being sold on the black market to people from other countries where horse is a delicacy.

Miami-Dade Police Capt. Scott Andress, whose agency is among those investigating the horse slaughters, said the cases are tough to solve because they usually happen in rural areas where there are no eyewitnesses. He said his officers are working to confirm whether the horse meat is being sold to consumers.

Investigators have discovered animals with slit throats and slashed tendons. Some have been stabbed to the heart, and some might have been butchered alive. The meat is often harvested in unsanitary conditions - on the sides of roads, in dirty barns, with tools that might not be clean - but Couto says some people are still willing to pay $7 to $20 a pound.

Until a few years ago, as many as 100,000 horses were killed annually in the United States for meat for foreign markets. In Florida, it is legal for horse owners to kill and eat their own horses on their own land, but horses cannot be slaughtered and sold to others for human consumption.
A 2007 federal court ruling closed the nation's last horse-processing plant, though some groups are currently pushing to renew the slaughter of horses in the U.S. Horses that are sold for meat are now sent to processing plants in Mexico and Canada. News My Way

It's a shame and though it may be hard to catch the perpetrators, I hope with time the investigation will prove fruitful and lead to arrests.