Hold Your Horses! Experts Are Opposing A Karozzin Ban
Photo: TripAdvisor
Social media has in recent days been in uproar over the plight of karozzin horses in the sweltering heat. Several people have called for a ban on karozzini and today’s death of a horse in Floriana even prompted the parliamentary secretary for animal rights to call for an update to the law regulating the traditional horse and carriage.
Yet three Maltese people who work closely with unwanted and injured horses have now added a different dimension to the debate, warning that a ban on karozzini will actually prove detrimental to the horses
“If you look at the number of horse and carriages in Malta and the number of accidents, you can see that accidents don’t happen that often,” Malta Horse Sanctuary chairman Sean Galea told GuideMeMalta.com. “There are also horses which have had accidents and have become dehydrated in the paddock or in stables for example. The last thing an owner wants is for something to happen to their horse!”
“Every owner has at least three horses – each horse usually works one day and rests for two days. If there are no karozzini, if you bar them from doing their work, what do you think will happen to those horses? These owners will not be able to afford to keep them.”
A horse at the Malta Horse Sanctuary
Korin Farrugia from RMJ’s Horse Rescue referred the journalist to a Facebook post she uploaded last summer, in which he warned that a ban on karozzini will in all likelihood result in the horses getting slaughtered or abandoned.
“There are around 120 registered cab owners, most of which own more than one horse,” Farrugia said. “If the karozzini are banned what do you think will happen to all of them?? For those that are under the impression they will get to live out the rest of their lives content in a big field with food and water then I can assure you that won’t be the case. Most likely the majority will be slaughtered or abandoned somewhere away from sight. In Malta there is no safe haven for unwanted horses. While we try and rescue the ones we can there is no way we can take in such a large number.”
“Horses used in the karozzin are WORKING horses. They may not live the life of other leisure horses but this does not mean that they are not well cared for. The vast majority of them are well kept by their owners and most karozzini drivers own more than one horse to allow for their horses to be able to have days of rest. As with everything there is always the good and the bad but most of them are in very good condition.”
Mich Cachia and Christina Coppini from Rehome a Horse Malta echoed similar sentiments.
“People seem to have the idea that banning carriages would automatically mean horses are left to live a happy life grazing in massive fields,” they said. “The reality is that we live in Malta, where there are barely enough stables for the amount of horses on the island, let alone paddocks. We don’t have facilities or arenas or tracks where all these horses can be exercised. This means that horses will be homeless, because they suddenly have no purpose, and, to top it off, their owners will not be able to afford to feed them, because citizens have forced them to be unemployed.”
This karozzin horse died while on duty in Floriana earlier today
As for improving the welfare of karozzini horses, Galea and Farrugia called for more horse shelters and water hoses, with the latter also urging wardens to give tickets to drivers who park under shelters.
Besides these proposals, Cachia and Coppini also called for regulation in the horses’ working hours, including shifts for individual horses and moratoriums during summer late mornings and afternoons.
They also urged the government to provide karozzini owners with subsidies to restore their carriages and make them lighter.
A protest, organised by the NGOs Animal Liberation Malta and Vegan Malta, will be held in Valletta this Saturday to call for a complete ban on karozzini.
“Carriage horses are purely a tourist attraction—not a necessity,” the NGOs said. “The constant exposure to traffic, noise and pollution; the long hours of standing and walking on hard surfaces; the hard labor under sometimes extreme weather conditions such as very high island temperature; the high probability of accidents to both humans and horses which have and still happen in Malta; and lack of pasture, shade and water access are not consistent with the owners’ responsibility to provide high-quality, long-term care for the horses.”
What do you make of these arguments?
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