Dear Horse Loving Americans,

My name is Amanda Sorvino, founder of HorseFellas. I am excited to be a part of the anti-horse slaughter movement in this country. The legendary Barbaro did not die in vain. His spirit lives on forever in the heavy hearts of Americans. He is the national symbol of our deep reverence for horses. In the short time that we got to know Barbaro, we realized the compassion we can feel towards sentient beings. This heroic, majestic, and unforgettable thoroughbred was on his way to winning the Triple Crown, but his career and life as he knew it shattered when he broke down in the first furlong of the 131st Preakness Stakes. In the next several months he fought for his life, but in the end he just couldn't take the pain. Barbaro could bear no more.

Where does this leave the sport of kings in America? Horse racing may be around forever, but this time, the darkest shadow has been cast. There is never pure good without evil, glamour without seediness, greed without death. And the legendary sport of kings is now entering the proverbial stage as the sport of death. We all zoomed in for a close-up of life in the high society of triple crowns and million dollar horses. But what about horse racing on the other side of the tracks? What happens to those horses? Are they flown off to New Bolton when they sustain injuries, such as fractured sesamoids, during their last race? Unfortunately racehorses stabled out of "the jet set" are not given the same royal treatment. These lesser lights are considered to be "problems" when they are no longer winning races and cannot make money for their trainers and owners.

An injured Horsefella or a slow runner taking up stall space is nothing more than garbage that needs to be taken out fast for many trainers at these tracks. They can't afford a non-winner's stall space, so the horse is quickly sent off to a killer dealer and then, after being auctioned off at a sale full of tobacco spitting cowboys, the once glorified racehorse shares a killer haul with 40 head of horses and the last stop is a torturous death at the slaughterhouse. There are handfuls of trainers at "off-Broadway" tracks who really care about the fates of their retiring thoroughbreds, going so far as to list them on websites to attract the interest of hunter, jumper, dressage riders, horse breeders, or even families who will take on an injured pasture pal as a forever pet.

But not enough trainers are willing to lose money to buy stall time for these off-trackers. It is a vicious cycle at these lesser light tracks that never stops. My objective at HorseFellas is to take some of the load off of these race tracks and welcome their retired champions and non-champions into our family. In turn, we can provide them with care, lodging, pasture, training and love. Some horses will be retrained to be children's riding horses. Others, having suffered track induced injuries, will be able to offer companionship to a families looking for a pasture pet. Life-binding forever home contracts will ensure that these horses, once adopted, will never be in danger of falling into the wrong hands again.

Thankfully, the thoroughbred horse racing industry has stepped up and instigated the "zero tolerance policy." In other words, several racetracks cross-country will no longer permit their trainers to send poor athlete/injured racehorses to the slaughter sales. If a thoroughbred is located at a slaughter sale, identified through its lip tattoo, and traced back to its last owner/trainer at the track, the trainer is expelled from that track permanently.  The idiotic and ignorant Chase Adams , director of "The American Horse League" defines "zero tolerance" as a form of terrorism. Yearning for Cavel horse slaughterhouse's return, Adams advocates a world of horse maintenance, in which all racehorses will instantly be sent to "harvesting plants" to clean out the racing field of bad horses and feed the French. I recently challenged Mr. Adams on Howling Ridge Radio by asking him if he had ever walked into a horse slaughter plant. Of course, the answer was "No." But Adams reminisced,"I would love to go and visit. Cavel was really state of the art." I think that says it all.

The flip side of "zero tolerance" is that it leaves room for a new black market in the seedy racetrack world ... immediate dispersal of culled racehorses to horse slaughterhouses for zoo consumption. At these slaughter plants, nestled in America's small, backward towns, horses are collected with the guarantee that they will only leave the plant in a tube meat product. There are no yellow stickers, no rescuers who run lip tattoos with the Jockey Club, just a butcher with a .22 and a bone saw standing in front of a kill lot from which horses never leave alive. The lions and tigers at theme parks such as 6 Flags Great Adventure are happy, but the horses that are butchered for their appetites are first turned into grade 4-D meat via a process known on the inside track as "lean meat." We will learn more about these slaughterhouses in the near future, when one horse slaughterhouse manager in NJ will be brought to justice for ignoring the law for the past 20 years when it comes to the slaughter of American horses.


In an ideal world, racehorses would not be exploited by an industry that runs them for their lives and then sends them on a journey to hell. Hell for a retired racehorse is the knock box. The captive bolt. The conveyor belt. Being hung from your hind leg, your throat slit, and your limbs quartered while you're still alive. Horse slaughter is perhaps the most brutal and wicked death an animal can suffer. But until we are living in a world without horse slaughter, for now, there is HorseFellas, as well as a hundred other rescues like it that will open their barns to slaughter-bound horses.

In dedication to my childhood horse Pastell, AKA "A Date To Remember",

Amanda Sorvino

Director and Founder, Horsefellas