PETA Statement: Horse’s Collapse Prompts Angry Rally at City Hall

For Immediate Release:
August 11, 2022

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Below, please find a statement from PETA Director Ashley Byrne in response to the collapse of a reportedly sick horse—named Ryder—used by the carriage trade who was worked in the heat last night:

Just weeks after a horse in New York City’s carriage trade collapsed and died in his stall, another horse collapsed yesterday and lay on Ninth Avenue for over an hour with no veterinary care while his driver reportedly slapped him, whipped him, and screamed at him to get up. The city’s horse-carriage trade has been plagued for years by complaints of mistreatment and overwork of horses, and PETA is calling on the NYPD Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad to launch a criminal investigation into this incident. We will rally outside City Hall today in support of Int 0573, which would replace these cruel carriages with electric ones that don’t force horses to toil for tourism.

PETA and New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NYCLASS) will be outside City Hall at 12:30 p.m. today, just before the city council’s 1:30 p.m. meeting.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.