A horse's role in human society doesn't make their life more valuable.

Imagine if the government started gunning down Police horses..
Just picture that for a minute.
How about a paddock full of beautiful Andalusians? What if they flew over and targeted a child's pony?

How on earth is society so, so easily swayed by the use of a few target words? Compassion flies out the window and people relax in their armchairs accepting it, or even supporting it.

A police horse is no more morally worthy than a brumby just because humans have given them a job.
There is no fundamental difference between a brumby, a kids beloved pony, a racehorse, a show horse or a police horse.

The fact that a horse has been trained to serve humans does not somehow give its life greater inherent value. A racehorse does not become more worthy because it can win a race compared to one who is slower. The child's pony who is loved and cared for doesn't have more value than the pony left out in the paddock and neglected.
A brumby does not become less worthy because humans have decided to label them “feral”.
How can words change policies on how inhumanely a horse can be treated?

The circumstances of their lives may be completely different, but a horses inherent value doesn't change because of what they know or look like, only human perception of them does.

A brumby doesn't become a different animal because it was born beyond a fence. They don't become less intelligent, less capable of suffering or less deserving of compassion.
The only thing that changes is the story people tell themselves about it.
That is why it is so easy for the government to get away with killing animals once they have categorised them.
Their "value" diminishes because of descriptions like “a population”, “pests”, “numbers to be reduced”.
The language makes it easier for people who are unable to think for themselves to forget what it is they are talking about. Anyone who has personally known a brumby would never advocate for inhumane slaughter. But people are often so sheltered that all they have are the words the government and the media feeds them, and they eat it up without question.
Humans can assign different values to different lives. That doesn't mean those lives actually have different values.

Written by Lisa Willey