No Breeze for Horses

To the Editor:

Regarding your recent article "School Kitchen Staff Frying" - by Meredith Kolodner - I have great sympathy for the workers who toil in the kitchens serving lunches to children. It must be unbearable to work under such extreme temperature conditions and something should be done about it.

However, your snide comment about temperature regulations for the NYC carriage horses - that by law they do not have to work when it is 90 or above - diminishes us as a hopefully evolved people. It suggests that the carriage horses are being treated like kings when the truth is very different.

Have you ever been to their stables? They live in warehouses - their stalls accessed by steep ramps - and they are not air-conditioned either. Besides, what you do not realize is that horses do not do well in the heat - they can easily suffer heat stroke - they are much more susceptible than people.

Horses are stuck between the shafts of their carriages for nine hours a day, seven days a week while they work pulling around cart-loads of tourists. They are herd animals - yet they do not get to socialize with other horses. And they have no choice in this exploitation. Shall I compare that to city workers who have it better? Many horses end up slaughtered for the foreign dinner plate after a devoted career. Surely - city workers have it better here, too.

The ethical and moral progress of this great city depends on how well we treat all living, sentient beings - animal and human. It does not help when we try to stir things up by making unfair and misguided comparisons.

ELIZABETH FOREL, Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages

Editor's note: The story merely noted that while there are certain temperatures that the city believes are not fit to have horses working in, no such regulations apply for the school kitchen workers. We're not sure how that became a "snide" comment.