From CNN Correspondent Don Knapp

CARMEL, California (CNN) -- Once the fun ends, and the cost of care and feeding for aging horses begins to mount, many are sent to the slaughterhouse, and eventually to someone's dinner table.

Sam the horse was as good as gone when Barbara Clarke of the Redwing Horse Sanctuary rescued him.

"He was in a slaughter yard; he'd actually been bought by the slaughterhouse buyer," Clarke said. "He couldn't get him in a truck to go to Texas because he had a broken leg. So he was lying out in 100-degree heat."

Horses auctioned in California are often trucked to Texas slaughterhouses, and eventually end up in European and Asian meat markets and restaurants.

RELATED VIDEO
CNN's Don Knapp examines the controversy
Windows Media	28K	56K

But that soon may change.

In November, a state ballot measure will determine whether horse meat should be banned from sale for human consumption.

If passed, the "Save the Horses" initiative would also keep California restaurants from putting it on the menu.

"They're trying to tell the general public what they can and what they can't eat," said horse and cattle auctioneer Jim Warren. "I wouldn't want someone to tell me I couldn't eat broccoli, or cauliflower or lettuce."

"It is eaten in other countries just as dogs and cats are eaten in other countries," said Cathleen Doyle of the California Equine Council. "We would no more allow the slaughter of our pet dogs and cats to be exported to fill that market, as we would for our pet horses to be slaughtered to fill that demand."

There has been little or no organized opposition to the ballot initiative. Probably because most Californians find it troubling to think of horses the way they think of cows -- as steaks or hamburgers.