Animals’ Angels investigators visited the monthly horse sale in Carthage, MS. The auction is operated by horse trader/former kill buyer George Varner from Florence, MS. Varner has been in the horse business for a long time and used to ship horses to the Texas horse slaughter plants. With the decline of the horse slaughter industry Varner, like so many others, has found that the online brokering of horses is way more lucrative and now sells horses online on his “Southern States Lot” page. While the page claims to rehome horses “in the slaughter pipeline”, most of the horses listed were acquired at Varner’s own auction and were too expensive to ever really be in danger of being shipped to slaughter.
When investigators visited Varner’s sale in Carthage, they immediately noticed a for sale sign at the auction building. Further research revealed the 5-acre property, and all buildings are indeed for sale for $249,000 on a local realtor’s website. They also notice that it was a very slow sale day with only 21 horses present. One of the regulars was overheard saying that the auction “had begged him to drop off some horses, since they otherwise would have nothing to sell”. Investigators entered the barn and checked the condition of the horses. Several were quite thin. Only very few horses had access to water.
The sale started at 1:50pm with Varner and his wife Stacy maintaining a presence in the auction ring. A pretty Walkaloosa with a cut on his leg sold for $1100. A 6-year-old mini mule sold for $200. A 13-year-old Amish Standardbred mare sold for $800. The mare spooked while in the ring and the auction worker was observed hitting her in the face with a rein with full force to get her to comply. Several of the horses that went through the ring were “no-saled” by the seller because they did not fetch the price that they were hoping to get. Several local horse traders left the sale within the first 20 minutes, disappointed that there wasn’t anything suitable to purchase. Overall, the investigators couldn’t help but think that this auction – like so many previously very busy horse sales operated by kill buyers – will not be around much longer.