Speaking from Central Park in New York City, City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced this afternoon that she would support Intro 943, formerly known as Ryder’s Law, to ban carriage horse rides after a tourist and horse died in separate accidents last month. She is the first City Council Speaker to publicly back a carriage trade ban.

“When I first became Speaker, I knew I would have to make some difficult decisions. That doing the right thing means taking a stand when it wasn’t always straightforward,” Menin said in a video she released.

She called the Romanch Mahajan’s death heartbreaking and preventable, and she also spoke about the safety of the horses.  

“Today I really wanted to make my position clear. It’s time to usher Central Park into a new safer chapter in its long story.”

Friends of Animals couldn’t agree more.

That’s why we will be testifying in support  of Intro 943 at its official public hearing before the NYC Health Committee tomorrow. Since the bill can be amended after the hearing, we support adding language that bans carriage horses immediately instead of a phase out by 2028 and creates a fund to enable the city to facilitate a buyout of the horses from the owners and help with placement fees at the sanctuaries who need them.

FoA is offering $25,000 to start.

In a desperate move to deflect from the danger and cruelty inherent in the brutal horse-drawn carriage trade, the industry has pivoted from talking about increasing so-called safety measures like hitching posts to spreading the narrative that all the horses are going to end up in the slaughter pipeline if Intro 943 gets signed into law.

The irony is that currently there is absolutely no accountability for when a horse leaves the trade, if they don’t drop dead on the street first.

Existing antiquated regulations simply require carriage horse operators to notify the Office of Veterinary Public Health Services when a horse leaves service within 10 days. Such notice shall include the date of disposition and if sold in New York city, the name and address of the buyer or other transferee and such other information as the commissioner may prescribe. Horses sold or transferred outside of New York are not tracked, and no records are kept.

Friends of Animals has filed a Freedom of Information Law request to find out where all the horses from the last three years are now living since they stopped being useful to the trade. FoA wants to know where the 7-year-old horse, named Sampson, who was yanked from carriage service following the tragic accident that claimed the life of Romanch Mahajan, is.

The carriage horse trade being deadly is not the only reason it needs to be banned—on a day-to-day basis it robs equines of their basic needs—adequate turnout for roaming free and socialization. Research shows that horses with regular turnout exhibit lower stress-related behaviors compared to those confined to stalls, contributing to a calmer mind and body.

Not only does the carriage horse industry take away the very things these animals need to decompress, relax, or in other words, “get back to grazing,” they are then hitching a carriage to them and forcing them to pull it—along with unassuming tourists—into the loud, unpredictable environment of NYC.

The fact is, no matter what you teach the drivers, you can never teach a horse to unlearn the prey response. They are hardwired for survival. Even in the safest, calmest environments, horses may still freeze, bolt, or react defensively to sudden changes.

“FoA understands why the industry sprang into action by shutting down briefly so the horse carriage drivers could undergo safety training after the teen was killed. And while that may have made the public and tourists feel safer, they aren’t,” FoA President Priscilla Feral said. “And neither are the horses.”