Today Hakol Chai Wrote to the Transportation Minister, Israel Katz: "In Israel in 2012, a horse harnessed to a cart is not a vehicle but abuse!"

PRESS RELEASE

Tel Aviv, 4 July 2012

Hakol Chai, as part of its continuous struggle against horse-drawn carts, has sent a letter to the Minister of Transportation, asking him to change the existing legal definition of horse-drawn carts as "vehicles."

In her letter, Michal Volanski-Atias, the professional manager of Hakol Chai, points out that according to the basic definition that exists today in the traffic laws, a cart harnessed to an animal is defined as a vehicle. This definition gives full validity to one of the examples of abuse of animals in our country—horse-drawn carts.

Volanski-Atias adds in her letter that on top of the issue of the suffering of animals, which is a significant aspect of this phenomenon, there exists the element of danger this phenomenon creates for all of those who are using the road (motorized vehicles and their drivers and passengers as well as pedestrians). It causes traffic delays and heavy traffic, just as any vehicle that does not follow the speed required by law is a significant danger to the rest as well as to its own safety.

During the past months, Hakol Chai has initiated the project "Horse-drawn Carts: A Witness Campaign," by which it has called for the participation by the public of informing them, through photos and by specifying the location, each time they encounter a horse-drawn cart, in order to measure the extent of this phenomenon, which so many tend to see as something of the past. As a result of the project, the organization has been receiving numerous reports from the public, on a daily basis, of horse-drawn carts with horses who are being used under harsh and shameful conditions in various cities around the country.

Hakol Chai reports that the sight of the skinny and/or wounded horses, pulling behind them heavily loaded carts in the middle of town, is shocking residents around the country. The organization has been asked countless times how it will be possible to eradicate this cruel phenomenon. Such inquiries are coming from residents in large cities, such as Tel-Aviv, Ramat-Gan, Givataim, Kfar-Saba, Netanya, and others. The collected reports show this to be a problem that is widespread in large parts of the country.

In her letter, Volanski-Atias points out that in the situation as it is today, the local authorities are unable to enforce the existing legislation, and they find themselves helpless in the face of this phenomenon. The authorities’ municipal bylaws and the Animal Protection Law do not provide an appropriate response, since they do not define the subject of enslaving animals in an urban area. They do not address the mental agony the animals suffer as a result of walking on noisy, paved urban roads, and they do not bring about a proper preventive enforcement system.

At the end of her letter, Volanski-Atias presents before Minister Katz the requirement to change the basic legal definition by which a horse pulling a cart is defined as a vehicle, in order to help eradicate this phenomenon, which does not belong to the reality in which we live today.

According to Michal Volanski-Atias: "It should not be possible that in the year 2012 the sight of exploited, neglected, and wounded horses would still be an inseparable part of the urban landscape in Israel. A change of this legal definition is not tied to resources or a budget and is merely a question of policy. We call on the Minister of Transportation to refuse to validate this tragic example of abuse in the streets of our cities, which for a large portion of the public has become an environmental hazard and an outrage."

Read the letter (in translation)