COOKEVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Nearly two dozen horses and donkeys are getting second chance at life after they were rescued in a horse auction in Cookeville Tuesday night. Many could have been sold to slaughterhouse scouts if it weren’t for the Horse Plus Humane Society.

“There’s hundreds every single week and many of those horses come from Tennessee and are exported to Mexico for human consumption, after they’re slaughtered in the slaughterhouse,” said the organization’s founder Tawnee Preisner, “It’s terrible. We all love horses, we wouldn’t think that, you know, verses from Tennessee are being exported for slaughter but it happens a lot.”

According to USDA data, 60 horses were transported from Texas to Mexico for slaughter on Friday alone, a total of nearly 2,000 transported year to date.

Wednesday morning, the humane society loaded up 19 of the animals they bought to be rehabbed at the shelter in Hohenwald and then put up for adoption.  FULL STORY HERE