Horse row puts star in harness
LIAM Neeson, the Hollywood movie star, has ridden to the defence of the endangered horse-drawn carriages of Central Park, one of New York’s most famous institutions.
Bill de Blasio, the city’s mayor, has pledged to ban the popular sightseeing carriages this year after a campaign by animal rights groups backed by celebrity supporters such as Alec Baldwin and Miley Cyrus.
Critics argue that the industry is inhumane and dangerous as horses are made to pull a heavy carriage — and sometimes heavy tourists — on hard roads amid busy traffic and polluted air.
But Neeson, a New York resident, has taken to the opinion pages of the New York Times to defend the industry’s drivers and stable hands and criticise the mayor’s plans to replace the carriages with electricpowered replicas of vintage cabs.
Neeson said he was a horse lover who grew up riding the animals on his aunt’s farm in County Armagh, Ireland, and had starred alongside them in Westerns and “cowboys in armour” films.
He insisted that the carriage trade was a humane and regulated industry, that the stables were well kept and inspected, and injuries were rare.
“I can appreciate a happy and well-cared-for horse when I see one,” he wrote.
“It has been my experience, always, that horses, much like humans, are at their happiest and healthiest when working.”
He called the proposed ban “a class issue”— a clear dig at De Blasio’s left-wing politics — when he argued that the livelihood of workers was under threat because “real estate interests” eyeing the stables for redevelopment were funding the industry’s animal rights critics.
Allie Feldman, executive director for the lobbying group New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, said: “The issue is about the inhumanity of horses working in dangerous Midtown traffic.” She described their working conditions as “cruel and unsafe”.— ©