Last
summer, the carriage horse issue came to a head when tennis celebrity and
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) spokesman Martina
Navratilova and others were berated by a driver with shocking slurs , using the N word, C word for women
and D word for lesbians, while they were protesting the carriage rides.
Stephen Malone, a stable owner, carriage driver and spokesman for the industry, admitted that only two of the approximately 150 drivers are American in an interview. But, he says the industry is a New York "tradition" and animal advocates are trying to take "food" out of his children's mouths.
According
to Edita Birnkrant of Friends Of Animals, the New York Department of Health and
Department of Consumer Affairs nominally regulates the carriage horse industry
but gives complaints to the American Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) which has 12 to 18 officers, only one or two
monitoring carriage horses. But Stephen Malone, the carriage horse
spokesman, disputes that there are only one or two officers watching the
industry and rattled off several ASPCA names that he says drivers work with.
According
to animal advocates, the life and fate of the city's 200 to 220 current
carriage horses is cruel. After facing heat prostration, exhaust pipe
fumes, inhumane stable conditions and driver mishandling, they are bought by
killer-buyers for slaughter at a mere four to seven years says veterinarian
Holly Cheever. Every year, as many as 60 horses "disappear" from city
records, presumably dying in the stables or going to Mexico or Canada for
slaughter, say Dr Cheever.
Ruth
A. Juris, a former equine veterinarian who testified about the carriages over
twenty years in front of Mayor David Dinkins, agrees. "Horses are among
the most skittish and sensitive of living creatures and the most humane
solution would be to ban the carriage horse industry at once because all
measures to confine horses to Central Park, and to ensure that the horses have
proper food, water, and humane stables, have failed," she says.
Would
the retired horses earn a one-way ticket to the slaughterhouse? Not
necessarily, says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, who has
worked for 30 years against the carriage rides. Feral believes all the animals
could be placed in sanctuaries, preferable to slaughterhouses where horses
"are not always dispatched humanely" but killed by rifle fire, which can
require up to 15 rounds.
Horse
meat, not commonly eaten in the US, is a popular commodity in other countries
though it can harbor butazolidine ("bute), steroids and toxic veterinary
drugs since the animals were not raised for food. The American Veterinary
Medical Association (AVMA) supports the "humane" slaughter of horses which the
USDA has taken steps toward approving, though legal battles continue.
One
alternative to the carriage horse industry is electric cars, which would still
please tourists and provide jobs. While the New York City Council would have to
pass prototype legislation and pre-empt the Central Park Conservancy's electric
car ban, PETA is one group that supports the transition. Still, some suggest
that the potential money in electric cars is behind Bill de Blasio's
anti-carriage stance. Real estate tycoon Steven Nislick, founder of the
anti-carriage group, NYCLASS, is a donor to the de
Blasio campaign. Meanwhile Quinn has thus far blocked electric cars.
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