Bella Hadid Calls For Ban On “Cruel” NYC Carriage Horses
“We have to do something now”, the supermodel urged her 54.5 million Instagram followers, after another horse was filmed collapsing after pulling a heavy carriage through the city’s busy streets.
Credit: Voters For Animal Rights
Bella Hadid has urged her followers to call for a ban on New York City’s carriage horses, after footage of a horse collapsing on the city’s busy streets went viral.
Taking to Instagram, the supermodel posted photos of carriage horse Ryder, who collapsed in Midtown on August 10. Onlookers described Ryder as sick and malnourished, and he waited on the hot asphalt, collapsed, for over an hour with no veterinary care. While NYPD officers hosed him with water and covered him in ice until he could stand again, footage of the incident shows the horse’s driver and owner, Ian Mckeever, whipping and hitting Ryder while the horse was in a collapsed state.
Speaking to her 54.5 million Instagram followers, Hadid said it was “barbaric” to force horses like Ryder to pull heavy carriages in extreme heat and in the busiest city in America.
“This has been going on for WAY too long in this kind of environment”, the 25-year-old added, and called for “cruel” carriage horses to be phased out and replaced with humane, animal-free electric carts.
Hadid ended her post by urging her followers to “Take action”, sharing a link to the animal welfare organization NYCLASS and its campaign to introduce new legislation to protect carriage horses. The Intro 573 legislation seeks to “replace suffering, dying carriage horses with cruelty-free electric carriages”.
New York’s Horse Carriage Problem
This incident with Ryder is just the latest to cause headlines around the world for New York’s controversial horse-drawn carriages.
A 12-year-old mare named Aisha collapsed and died while giving carriage rides in Central Park in 2020. Before her death, she was filmed stumbling and unable to straighten her back legs, before completely collapsing. In an effort to make her stand, carriage-industry workers appeared to blow smoke into Aisha’s face, leading her to flip over in terror.
And last year, a New York carriage horse named Chief crashed into the back of a BMW and suffered deep lacerations to his midsection, head, and front right leg.
The bloody aftermath of Chief’s collision with a car in New York last year. Credit: Matthew_t_dominguez
Globally, popular tourist destinations that allow carriage horses have increasingly faced calls to ban the practice and provide more ethical alternatives. Dominican Republic’s historic capital city of Santo Domingo recently replaced horse-drawn carriages with modern, animal-free electrice carriages, while the city of Chicago banned horse-drawn carriage rides after a decade-long attempt to regulate the industry failed to help protect the horses.
Animal welfare organizations hoped that Chicago’s ban in 2020 on carriage horses in the city would influence other cities to follow suit and become carriage-free too.
So far, New York has resisted growing calls for a ban despite recent horse deaths and injuries, and welfare organizations including NYCLASS are encouraging New Yorkers to contact their local leaders and Council Members about the issue to urge them to "co-sponsor Bill # 573 to replace cruel 19th Century horse carriages with cruelty-free electric carriages.”
If you’re outside of NYC, NYCLASS are urging people to continue calling NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams at 718.206.2068 or 212.788.7210 and email at SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.gov and urge her to END the abuse by passing Intro 573.
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