BALLOT MEASURE CREATED TO RESCUE HORSES; INITIATIVE WOULD STOP EXPORTS OF FOOD MADE FROM RETIRED NAGS.

Byline: Frank Bruni The New York Times

The scenery around the retirement community that Linda Moss manages is flat, chalky and desolate, and the slow-moving, spindly-legged retirees don't have much to occupy their days.

But the sun is reliable, the company is dependable and the alternative might be considered harsh. The roughly 300 residents in Moss' care almost exited life as sausages or steaks.

Moss runs a rescue center in this dust bowl between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert for old, disabled or unwanted horses that were bound for slaughterhouses in Texas or Nebraska and for sale abroad to French, Belgian or Japanese restaurants and meat shops.

The animals on her 40-acre ranch are refugees from an industry and culinary tradition of which few Americans are even aware. They are also poster creatures for one of the latest initiative drives in the nation's most populous state.

It's up to voters

Come November, Californians, who recently weighed in on the fates of bilingual education and affirmative action, will be asked to decide the destiny of horses: specifically, whether to make it illegal to participate in the sale or purchase of a horse pegged for human ingestion.

``It's the least we can do for a nice animal that's given so much to us,'' Cathleen Doyle, one of the initiative's principal backers, said as she walked with Moss among the Arabians, Clydesdales and thoroughbreds at the Equus Sanctuary here.

These women and their allies have named the initiative ``Save the Horses'' and hitched it to a number of informal slogans, including ``Off the Table, In the Stable'' and ``Just Say Neigh.'' It is intended to spare what Doyle estimated to be about 10,000 horses in California every year from winding up as breakfast, lunch or dinner.

But the referendum also draws attention to people's complicated, contradictory attitudes toward the animals they raise and to the fuzzy, fickle lines they draw between acceptable and unacceptable uses of different beasts.

Not vegetarians

Many of the supporters of ``Save the Horses'' happily chew the flesh of cows and pigs and issue no particular lament over horses dragging heavy carriages of wealthy tourists through American cities in the oppressive summer heat.

But sirloin of pinto? ``It just strikes the wrong chord,'' said Bill Hemby, a legislative advocate for the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs, one of several groups to endorse the referendum.

``I can't give you a hard and fast ideological reason,'' Hemby said. ``I guess it's just that if we're going to breed horses or dogs for pleasure or show, we have an obligation not to eat them.''

Some critics of the referendum say that's a silly strain of sentimentalism that ignores the logic of finding a profitable use for unneeded horses and that disingenuously equates horses with household pets.

``They want horses recognized as `companion animals,' '' said Brent Heberlein, general manager of Beltex Corp. in Fort Worth, Texas, which slaughters horses from all over the country and exports their meat, mostly to France.

``Does that mean everybody's going to be walking their horse around the block before work in the morning?'' Heberlein asked. ``Or taking it to the 7-Eleven to pick up a quart of milk?''

Foreign tastes

Although few if any restaurants or stores in the United States sell horse meat, similar establishments in other countries do, and animal welfare advocates estimate that about 100,000 horses are slaughtered in the United States every year to supply those foreign businesses.

Several thousand additional horses from the United States are transported to Mexico or Canada to be killed there. Advocates said they have received reports of horses being flown to Japan to be eaten raw and thinly sliced, like sashimi.

This trade has existed for decades and is not only legal, but also regulated by the Department of Agriculture. Horse owners get several hundred dollars from traders, and the slaughterhouses that buy and kill the horses send the low-fat, high-protein meat to countries where it fetches as much as $15 a pound and is eaten by people who could well afford other foods.

The California measure, the first of its kind, would affect only animals and transactions within the state, making it a crime to sell or buy a horse, mule, donkey or meat from any of these animals if it is intended to feed people. But its supporters say they hope it will spark similar referendums in other states.

The initiative's promoters do not oppose the rendering of horses into products from pet food to paint thinner because horses used for these purposes are killed painlessly.

Different killing

But horses to be eaten by people cannot be pumped full of drugs, which would taint their meat. Like cattle, they must be slaughtered, and the method is similar: a long metal nail is shot into their heads to knock them out, then they are hoisted into the air and drained of blood.

Trina Bellak, an executive with the Humane Society of the United States, said a horse's experience of this is more terrifying than a cow's. Because a horse is more likely to thrash its head in the killing stall, Bellak said, several metal nails are sometimes needed to topple the animal.

Bellak also said that the way horses are transported to slaughterhouses, packed into trucks for trips that can last two days, disregards their panicky reaction to crowding.

``Horses get very territorial and have a personal space issue,'' Bellak said.

But beyond all this, supporters of ``Save the Horses'' say they object to what they see as a violation of the unspoken human covenant with horses, which have long been treated with more affection than common livestock.

It was not a pig, after all, that Elizabeth Taylor rode in ``National Velvet,'' and neither ``My Friend Flicka'' nor ``Black Beauty'' is easily imagined with a cow in the title roles.