The Scene

Lea Michele and Pamela Anderson Urge Others to Help Fight for NYC Carriage Horses

Published on Wednesday, November 09 2011
Written by Super User

The latest buzz circling around New York City (other than the Occupy Wall Street movement) surrounds the carriage horse industry; thousands of volunteers have come together through NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets), the ASPCA, and PETA to protect New York’s horses and put an end to the industry completely.

In addition to the New Yorkers that have volunteered to end the inhumane treatment of carriage horses, many celebrities have also put forth an effort to help these poor animals, like Lea Michele and Pamela Anderson.

On November 5, Pamela tweeted, “For the second time in less than two weeks, a carriage horse has collapsed on a Manhattan street,” and ever since, Lea has been constantly tweeting with the trending subject #stophorsecarriages and has also spoken out about the harsh lives they live on a PSA commercial.

NYCLASS is encouraging as many people to sign the volunteer petition as possible, hoping to reach 50,000 supporters to help stop the abuse and provide New York with a new tourist attraction of the electric vintage-replica tour car.

The horse industry is a main attraction to many tourists upon their visits to the one and only Big Apple, but the horses that pull the carriages all across the city live in congested settings, constantly breathing in toxic exhaust while working. In the horse’s non-working hours, these beautiful animals are confined to extremely small stables that prevent them from moving around at all. Some horses with slightly larger stables still do not have enough space to move or get comfortable when they need to sleep because the stalls are not lined with proper bedding and are typically filled with feces for days at a time.

These overworked animals are constantly contracting illnesses, and within the last two weeks, two carriage horses have collapsed mid-ride and died because of the inhumane conditions that they are forced to live under.

These poor animals deserve all they help they can get; to fully understand the extreme conditions that these NYC horses live in and work through every day, watch Lea Michele’s touching public service announcement, educating the public about what these sick animals are forced to undergo 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

 

- Samantha Blum, YH Staff