Carriage animals' health protections greatly improved

When summer comes to Charleston and the temperatures climb, residents and tourists alike are rightfully concerned about Charleston's carriage animals. A recent article in The Post and Courier raised concerns about the temperature in which the animals work. As chair of the city's Tourism Commission, I'd like to respond.

In 2004, the Tourism Commission established the Ad Hoc Committee on Animal Drawn Vehicles, with representatives from the SPCA (now the Charleston Animal Society), one member from the carriage industry, a veterinarian with expertise in equine medicine, the city's officer of animal control, and two members of the Tourism Commission. As the only commissioner who had experience with horses, I agreed to serve on the committee and subsequently chaired its three-year effort.

The goal was to develop a set of recommendations related to all aspects of the care of the carriage animals and to ensure that those recommendations were enacted into ordinance form. In early 2007, City Council approved seven pages of recommendations, which provide requirements for the general health and welfare of animals used in the tourism industry within the city of Charleston. This marked the first time that the city code had enforceable regulations specifically for the welfare of carriage animals.

During the three-year process, the committee consulted with organizations such as the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the S.C. State Climatology Office, the USDA Animal Welfare Council and the Carriage Operators of North America.

The ordinance now governs a wide variety of issues including: equipment and harnesses; carriage stands; care and shelter of animals, including overall flesh and tone; the requirement that all the animals wear special rubber or elastomer shoes;maximum hours of work; veterinary care and how often the horse must be offered water when at work; feed; stables and stalls, including minimum depth of bedding and the requirement that fans be used when temperatures reach 90 degrees; record keeping that each carriage operator must maintain and make available to the Tourism Office and the police department; and finally, regulations related to weather.

Each carriage operator is now required to have a bi-annual examination of its animals by the operator's own veterinarian. The doctor is then required to complete a certificate of serviceability for each animal, which notes the basics such as the animal's age and breed as well as a non-alterable identification mark such as a brand, tattoo or microchip, a photo showing all scars and identifying marks, and a note if there are any restrictions on the animal's ability to work in heat.

An additional safeguard, one which I believe Charleston is unique in requiring, is that when the ambient temperature reaches 90 degrees, the carriage operators must take the rectal temperature of the animal after each tour. This is a critical part of the regulations because all horses react differently to heat. Some are easily able to acclimate and cool down, and others are more subject to heat stress and prove unable to work in this climate.

Further requirements spell out the cool-down process of an overheated animal and the point at which a veterinarian must be summoned. Additionally, the ordinance requires that the city hire an independent veterinarian once a year to inspect all the carriage operations.

The city has long had a policy requiring that carriage tours must be halted when the temperature reaches 98 degrees and that official measurement was recorded behind the police department on Lockwood Boulevard. Our research showed that most municipalities around the country specified their temperature measurement "as determined by the National Weather Service."

However, our state climatology office informed us that the downtown gauge was on the water and therefore not ideal, and the station at the Air Force Base was at some distance from where the animals worked. We subsequently learned of the Weather Bug system, already used by some local businesses and with data available online and updated every three minutes. Based on our research and the fact that this data could be accessed by the Tourism Office, the Police Department, carriage operators and concerned members of the public, we chose to use the posted data from the Weather Bug station closest to the carriage zones of operation, the Sea Grant Consortium.

Is the resulting ordinance perfect? No. Is it an improvement over previous measures for ensuring the health and welfare of these animals? Absolutely. And I would say that it is in fact a better set of regulations than we would have had without the long deliberations of all involved.

The regulations may need tweaking in the future, and they are only as good as our ability to enforce them. But I hope the public has some assurance that there are measures in place, and I encourage anyone who is concerned about the condition of one of these animals to immediately contact the city and our animal welfare organizations.

Cathy Forrester is chair of the Charleston Tourism Commission.