In an historic move that Friends of Animals is applauding, the New York City Council, led by Speaker Julie Menin, will vote Oct. 22 to ban the carriage horse trade, finally ending the exploitive industry that’s imprisoned horses since 1858 when Central Park opened. FoA will join bill sponsor Council Member Christopher Marte, who reintroduced the legislation in June, for a celebratory rally in City Hall Park at noon before the vote takes place.
Founded in New York in 1957 and having an office across from Central Park, FoA has a front-row seat to the nose-to-tailpipe, grueling existence of NYC carriage horses.
“Our long-standing ties to NYC and to the many FoA members who live there have always fueled our efforts to pass legislation that would abolish the inhumane industry for good. While there have been lame attempts to regulate the industry, FoA has never wavered from calling for a full ban and for the horses to be bought from their owners and sent to accredited sanctuaries where they will be provided lifelong care,” said Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals. “That still rings true today—the horses matter to us as much as they always did.”
While FoA is encouraged by the guardrails in the legislation, which restricts the types of places the horses can be sold, while at the same time adding oversight of the sales so the Mayor’s Office knows where the horses are going, we will keep pressure on the city to ensure no horse falls through the cracks and ends up in the slaughter pipeline, which has happened in the past.
The Mayor’s Office is also expected to connect the carriage horse owners with sanctuaries, creating a conduit to make it easier for the horses to get to sanctuaries, and Friends of Animals has already offered to take six horses to our accredited Texas sanctuary. FoA provides lifelong care for 300-plus animals, including three rescued wild horses.
Since the bill makes it possible for the City to raise public and private funds to compensate the owners for their horses, FoA has pledged $25,000 to start.
“There is no doubt we are celebrating the joy of this historic moment, but there is more work to be done to make sure all the horses are free from exploitation and can just be horses, as well as receive lifelong care,” Feral said.
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, and if the horse is given to someone in the state, to provide the name and address of the buyer or transferee. Horses sold or transferred outside of New York are not tracked, and no records are kept.
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 1,000-pound 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 Romanch Mahajan was killed this summer. And while that may have made the public and tourists feel safer, they aren’t,” Feral said. “And neither are the horses.”