The Argument For Banning Horse Carriages

OP ED

A leading proponent of the ban hits back

It's revealing that your editorial has seen fit to scold animal activists and hold them up to unrealistic and silly white glove standards, while ignoring the vicious lies of the carriage trade. By focusing on style over substance, you are not fulfilling your journalistic duties of bringing the truth to the public.

These are some of the lies:

* The horses will all go to slaughter if there is a ban. But it's the drivers who will bring the horses to slaughter. The ban will actually assure that the horses will be saved.

* This is a real estate land grab. Every group and individual involved in this issue wants to see the horses off the street because it's institutional cruelty and past time to retire them to a real sanctuary. The Hudson Yards redevelopment project has been under way for many more years than the ban campaign. This will benefit the majority of New Yorkers ? not just a small entitled group, which stands to make a huge profit on its properties.

* FBI is investigating. Prove it.

How about investigating this?

What's behind the Daily News trying to derail Mayor deBlasio? Whose money is behind the Tea Party backed Cavalry Group hired by the carriage trade?

Is this a $15 million to $19 million industry? We don't think so. Has this cash-only business produce tax returns?

There's a turnover of approximately 71 horses a year. Produce documentation to show where they go. Are the horses laundered through the Amish on their way to auction?

Just last week:

* A horse spooked on Central Park South and fell, pulling his carriage on top of him.

* A judge ruled the NYPD must hand over accident records to the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

* An owner was charged with falsifying the four-digit hoof ID number on an older horse named Ceasar to pass him off as one half his age.

Please do justice to this issue and begin to report it fairly.

Elizabeth Forel, president, Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages