Veterans Join Fight to End Horse Slaughter in New PSA from The Wild Beauty Foundation

The Lost Horse: James Oliver, Three Veterans

The Lost Horses: William Gilliam

The Lost Horse: James Oliver, horses and healing

The Lost Horse: Dan Quinajon

The Lost Horse: James and horse

The Lost Horses: Three Veterans calls on Congress to pass the SAFE Act and protect the animals who help America’s heroes heal.

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, November 11, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- On Veterans Day, The Wild Beauty Foundation (WBF) has released a moving new public service announcement, The Lost Horses: Three Veterans, featuring three U.S. servicemen who share how horses have aided their recovery from trauma — and why Congress must act to protect these animals from the cruelty of the slaughter pipeline.

The PSA is part of The Lost Horses campaign, a national initiative led by filmmaker Ashley Avis (Disney’s Black Beauty) to rally support for the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act (H.R. 1661 / S. 775). This bipartisan legislation would permanently ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption in the United States and prohibit the export of horses for slaughter abroad.

Although commercial horse-slaughter facilities have been closed domestically since 2007 through annual appropriations language defunding USDA inspections, tens of thousands of American horses are still exported each year to Canada and Mexico, where they are killed for meat. Many are healthy — former racehorses, ex–show jumpers, discarded lesson ponies, wild horses, donkeys, working animals, or family companions — who enter the darkness of the slaughter pipeline through auctions or kill buyers.

“Veterans oftentimes don’t ever feel safe, even when they come home,” says U.S. Army Combat Veteran James Oliver in the film. “It’s my hope that lawmakers will truly understand how much horses have helped veterans heal.”

“They spend their whole life doing a job, and then they’re done with them. It’s not unlike how we feel sometimes,” adds U.S. Marine Corps Veteran William Gilliam. “It’s un-American. No horse deserves to be lost to the slaughter pipeline.”

U.S. Navy Veteran and Photographer Dan Quinajon reflects, “If more people had horses in their life, the world would be a very different place.”

That belief isn’t sentiment—it’s science. Peer-reviewed studies—including an open trial in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and a 2024 systematic review in BMC Psychiatry—report clinically meaningful reductions in PTSD symptoms for veterans participating in equine-assisted therapy, alongside improved mood and social functioning. Horses mirror human emotion with extraordinary sensitivity; they ground those who have faced the chaos of war.

Ashley Avis, writer-director of Black Beauty and founder of The Wild Beauty Foundation, said:

“Horses have stood beside us in war and in peace. They’ve carried our soldiers, comforted our wounded, and continue to help veterans heal through equine-therapy programs that rebuild trust and hope. Passing the SAFE Act would honor that bond — the deep legacy we share with them — and finally close the loophole that still allows American horses to be exported and slaughtered overseas.”

The SAFE Act is supported by leading animal-welfare organizations, including the ASPCA, Humane Society of the United States, Animal Welfare Institute, The Cloud Foundation, and Equus Foundation. The Lost Horses campaign unites the emotional power of film with a clear policy call to end a practice overwhelmingly opposed by the American public.

The PSA and accompanying materials are available at LostHorses.org.

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Ashley Avis is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of The Wild Beauty Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of wild and domestic horses. She wrote and directed Black Beauty for Disney+ and the Critics Choice–nominated documentary Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West. Through her films and advocacy work, Avis uses storytelling to inspire compassion, awareness, and legislative change for animals across the United States.

Grace Kuhn
The Wild Beauty Foundation
grace@wildbeautyfoundation.org
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Horses Help Heal America’s Heroes | Wild Beauty Foundation Veterans Day PSA

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