Manhattan, NY – Animal welfare activists picketing Liam Neeson’s home on Saturday said they don’t agree with him that the city’s carriage horses should keep working.
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Neeson didn’t appear as about 50 demonstrators filled the sidewalk in front of his apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Police watched, and doormen photographed protesters hoisting signs with such slogans as “Liam Neeson: Stop Supporting Cruelty!” and “Worked to Death!” with an image of a dead horse in a park.
Holding the second sign was Peter Wood, an animal protection investigator for various organizations that say it’s cruel for the horses to be subjected to traffic, pollution and possible accidents.
“It’s 2014, not 1914. It’s time for a change,” said Wood, who lives in Manhattan.
“Horses don’t belong in traffic, surrounded by buses. They don’t belong in the city; it’s outdated, it’s cruel,” he said, adding, “Life attached to a carriage with a poop bag attached to your rear end — that’s no life.”
Neeson, whose movies include “Schindler’s List,” ”Taken” and “Non-Stop,” is a vocal supporter of the city’s carriage horses, which are kept in stables he toured recently with lawmakers. He says the horses are not being mistreated.
“It has been my experience, always, that horses, much like humans, are at their happiest and healthiest when working,” Neeson wrote in an April 14 editorial in The New York Times.
He called the horse carriage trade a “humane industry that is well regulated by New York City’s Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene and Consumer Affairs.”
Neeson said the city’s horse-drawn carriages have made an estimated 6 million trips in traffic in the past 30 years, most ending up in Central Park. Four horses have been killed in collisions with motor vehicles, with no human fatalities.
“In contrast to the terrible toll of traffic accidents generally on New Yorkers,” Neeson wrote, “the carriage industry has a remarkable safety record.”
His publicist declined to comment on Saturday’s protest.
The City Council must vote on the issue, but legislation has yet to emerge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has pledged to ban the carriages and replace them with electric vintage-style cars, commissioned by a group called NYCLASS.
On Saturday, NYCLASS’ members joined protesters from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They noted that the horse-drawn carriage trade was ended in at least three other cities: London in 1947, Paris in 1965 and Toronto in 1998.
The electric vehicle was unveiled several days ago at the New York International Auto Show. But Neeson said it can’t replace the horse-drawn carriages, which he calls a “signature element of New York’s culture and history.”
Hopefully these protesters will get trampled by horses and covered with the wate as well. Because that would be entirely fitting.
PETA is as usual way off base here. Horses are meant to carry people; that’s what they do; that’s what they have always done. Next they will ban dude-ranches. And they and their ilk are already successfully banning shechita in many parts of the world. These are the same people that toss paint on people wearing fur coars. Do not succumb to them and certainly not to anything that communist Al Sharpton lover Bill DeBlasio subscribes to.
These horses are bred to be work horses. They are better cared for than a lot of people. Maybe peta should protest NYPD horses used for crowd control. What about all the people that work on the streets. They also get the fumes and loud noises.
How about fighting poverty, homelessness and peace instead.
PETA is not the only group that has had an issue with the work practices of these horses. None of these horses are allowed to do anything but work and their stables are often in horrible shape.
Even if you dislike PETA, have you ever noticed what that street SMELLS like? They should ban the carriages for that and all the horse crap left all around there alone!
The only reason these horses exist is because people can make money off of them.
If they are banned, the horses won’t be treated better- the last remaining ones will be killed for dog food.
And there will be no more carriage horses- they will become EXTINCT!!!
Which is what happens to creatures that have outlived their usefulness.
Don’t let your emotions get to you- even if you feel bad for the horses, which may or may not be mistreated, if they are banned, that will be the end of these horses, period.
(And by the way, do you really think it is in the best interests of the owners to mistreat their meal tickets? They probably treat them with kid gloves, this is their livelihood.)
it’s not just PETA. horses are getting injured, breathing in carbon monoxide, being spooked by the loud noises and spend their down time in tiny spaces instead of acres of grass. they do not belong in the NY city environment schlepping around obese tourists in the heat and cold. they are social animals who need to be in packs with other horses. tzar balei chaim is the issue here for many.
PETA stinks. It kills most of the dogs and cats they take in. Most of them are a bunch of sick loser.
this is not TZAR BALEI CHI. This animals are made for this
Even if some of the current horses are adopted, there will be no future breeding of them, as they will become useless.
So PETA will effectively kill off a subspecies in order ‘to save them’.
I think the horses would rather live this life than be extinct.
And it is not tzaar baalei chayim to use an animal for a human need, including hunting and carriage-schlepping.
They may not be needlessly mistreated by Jews (non-Jews are not commanded against TBC), but using them, even harshly, is permitted.
Next they will go after pet owners for keeping animals in cages or leashes or training them to do tricks
anything said about horse and carriages can be said about the pedi cabs
they too should not be with motor vehicles. they too should not be out in the freezing cold or sweltering heat.
anyone agree???????