Shelter sick case heats up
to destroy the carriage horses,” carriage driver Christina Hansen said, saying the bill was “unscientific.”
“It is only a victory for the power of money in politics at the expense of working people. The horses, due process and science are the losers here.”
After de Blasio’s 2013 campaign got a financial boost from NYCLASS, he promised to completely ban Central Park horse carriages “on day one.” The effort failed spectacularly, though the city recently limited pickups to inside the park at the urging of NYCLASS.
That group had to fork over a $10,000 fine to the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics for lobbying without registering as a lobbyist group. JCOPE revealed the violation last year after an investigation, and also found that when de Blasio was running for mayor in 2013, he raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from NYCLASS.
During his first year in office, the mayor personally asked NYCLASS founder Nislick for a donation to a political nonprofit he’d created, Campaign for One New York, according to JCOPE.
The foie gras ban, which will go into effect in three years, prohibits restaurants and grocery stores in the city from storing or selling force-fed poultry products and food containing them, with violators owing between $500 and $2,000 in fines per offense.
“You start learning about it and it’s just terrifying,” de Blasio said of foie gras, the delicacy made from the livers of duck or geese that are often force-fed to fatten them up.
Another bill inked by de Blasio will make taking or attempting to take birds from the wild a misdemeanor subject to fines up to $1,000, an attempt to curb pigeon trafficking.
Monday marked the third time in recent weeks de Blasio actually signed Council legislation. Before last week, the mayor hadn’t signed a single bill since mid-March and let more than 100 bills lapse and become law without his signature.
One piece of legislation signed by the mayor Monday would establish an Office of Animal welfare. He also approved a bill mandating the NYPD publish reports on the number of animal cruelty complaints received and arrests issued.
Another bill signed by de Blasio would require city shelters post photographs of animals within three days of receiving them in an effort to increase adoptions. And a seventh bill would require dogs entering kennels or businesses to be vaccinated for Bordetella, which can lead to “Kennel cough,” a contagious respiratory disease.
A City Hall official should be fired for her “misleading” comments about food that sickened at least six residents of a Brooklyn homeless shelter, the victims’ lawyer says.
Last week, Dr. Fabienne Laraque, the Department of Homeless Services’ medical director, told the City Council’s General Welfare Committee “testing from the incident showed that the food was negative for bacteria pathogens.”
The victims’ lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, blasted the statement Monday, saying it was “clearly an attempt to distract from and cover up the cause of the food poisoning suffered by the victims as food poisoning is caused more frequently by toxins in food or viruses.”
He also lashed out at a statement from a Homeless Services spokesman who claimed to the Daily News, “We’re glad that those impacted are in good health.”
Rubenstein called it “a public relations ploy that has been exposed.”
“Dr. Laraque should be fired by the mayor and the Department of Homeless Services needs to get its act together and stop trying to mislead the public,” Rubenstein thundered.
“We strive to always deliver the best for our New Yorkers, which is why we immediately launched an investigation into this unfortunate incident,” de Blasio spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein said in a statement. “Ultimately, we tested the food and found no evidence of any pathogens that would cause food poisoning. Calling for the firing of a medical professional because she relayed those results is cheap, opportunistic and insulting.”
The Department of Health, which tested food at Fort Greene shelter after the incident, stuck by its results.
“Lab results were negative for pathogenic food-borne bacteria,” spokesman Patrick Gallahue said in a statement. “No evidence has been presented to us to the contrary, and if human cultures have been performed for food poisoning, positive results for these reportable pathogenic bacteria would have been submitted to the Health Department.”
At least one victim of the Oct. 24 incident, in which the Fort Greene shelter on Auburn Place exploded in vomiting from residents served rancid chicken, is still sick.
“Something seriously is going on and they don’t know what it is,” said Cynthia Berrera, wife of victim Mauricio Caballero. ““Last night he threw up about 10 times.”