FoA pledges $25K to start fund to buy NYC carriage horses, provide sanctuary placement fees
Priscilla Feral
For Immediate Release
July 13, 2026
Priscilla Feral, president, Friends of Animals 203.424.2120; fe...@friendsofanimals.org
FoA pledges $25K to start fund to buy NYC carriage horses, provide sanctuary placement fees
On July 15, the New York City Council Health Committee will hold the official public hearing on Intro 943, legislation reintroduced last month by Council Member Christopher Marte, which would phase out the city’s longstanding and controversial horse carriage industry altogether by June 1, 2028, stopping new licenses from being issued immediately.
If the bill is enacted into law, NYC carriage horses will not go to slaughter. That’s the message Friends of Animals, an international animal advocacy organization founded in 1957 in New York, will deliver to the Council.
“Since the bill can be amended after the hearing, we support adding language that creates a fund to enable the city to facilitate a buyout of the horses from the owners and help with placement fees at the sanctuaries who need them,” said Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals. “FoA can contribute $25,000 to start. We invite the TWU to engage with legislators and us on this.”
In a desperate move to deflect from the danger and cruelty inherent in the brutal horse-drawn carriage trade, the industry has pivoted from talking about increasing safety measures like hitching posts to spreading the narrative that all the horses are going to end up in the slaughter pipeline if Intro 943 gets signed into law.
Currently there is absolutely no accountability for when a horse leaves the trade, if they don’t drop dead on the street first. Existing antiquated regulations simply require carriage horse operators to notify the Office of Veterinary Public Health Services when a horse leaves service, and if the horse is given to someone in the state, to provide the name and address of the buyer or transferee. Horses sold or transferred outside of New York are not tracked, and no records are kept.
Friends of Animals has filed a Freedom of Information Law request to find out where all the horses from the last three years are now living since they stopped being useful to the trade. FoA wants to know where the 7-year-old horse, named Sampson, who was yanked from carriage service following the tragic accident that claimed the life of Romanch Mahajan, is.
The carriage horse trade being deadly is not the only reason it needs to be banned—on a day-to-day basis it robs equines of their basic needs—adequate turnout for roaming free and socialization. Research shows that horses with regular turnout exhibit lower stress-related behaviors compared to those confined to stalls, contributing to a calmer mind and body.
Not only does the carriage horse industry take away the very things these animals need to decompress, relax, or in other words, “get back to grazing,” they are then hitching a carriage to them and forcing them to pull it—along with unassuming tourists—into the loud, unpredictable environment of NYC.
The fact is, no matter what you teach the drivers, you can never teach a horse to unlearn the prey response. They are hardwired for survival. Even in the safest, calmest environments, horses may still freeze, bolt, or react defensively to sudden changes.
“FoA understands why the industry sprang into action by shutting down briefly so the horse carriage drivers could undergo safety training after the teen was killed. And while that may have made the public and tourists feel safer, they aren’t,” Feral said. “And neither are the horses.”
Friends of Animals, an international animal protection organization founded in New York in 1957.
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