Alan Cumming Urges City Council to Join Other World Capitals in Retiring Carriage Horses

Actor’s Appeal Coincides With New PETA Ad Campaign

For Immediate Release:
June 15, 2015

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Tony Awards host Alan Cumming has joined the likes of P!nk, Peter Dinklage, Wendy Williams, and Martha Stewart in lobbying for Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s bill to retire New York’s carriage horses. The Cabaret star, who lives in the East Village, has written a letter to city council members on behalf of PETA, explaining that other major cities have banned the horse-drawn carriage trade for issues of public safety and cruelty to animals—including Mumbai, India, whose high court banned the carriages just last week.

“As a U.K. native who has spent a lot of my acting career bouncing back and forth between Manhattan and London, I’ve been … saddened by the debate over New York’s horse-drawn carriages,” says Cumming. “London issued the last horse-drawn carriage license in 1947, when rebuilding the city after World War II, reasoning that easily skittish large animals don’t mix with the chaos of a modern metropolis (of 1947!!!).”

The campaign coincides with PETA’s new ad, available here, which cites other cities that have reined in horse-drawn carriages, including Paris; Toronto; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Salt Lake City, Utah—whose city council voted unanimously to ban the trade last year after a horse dropped dead in the street.

This two-minute video spotlights some of the notable New Yorkers supporting Mayor de Blasio’s plan to retire the horses. For more information, please visit PETA.org.