At the moment, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has about 45,000 wild horses in holding pens, many gathered from federal lands across the Southwest.
It's illegal to slaughter those horses here in the United States, but Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said sentiments are changing.
"In the last 10 years, there have been pretty vigorous efforts by a number of moneyed interests to open horse slaughter plants again in the U.S.," he said.
Pacelle said his agency has fought non-stop against it. "And, we've been successful," he said.
But, he has asked Congress to go further and pass the Safe Act this session. It would close a loophole that allows Canada and Mexico to slaughter U.S. horses and go on to sell the meat to European and Asian countries.
He believes Americans would be outraged to hear the details of the BLM and other agencies to ease restrictions on horses.
"There's no species that had a bigger role in the development and settlement of our country than the horse," he said. "Treating them as a commodity, killing them for foreign consumers, it's a disgrace!"
The BLM has argued it has no choice, and estimates it spends $50 million a year housing the horses.
