The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) welcomed regulations tabled in the House of Assembly yesterday that will benefit all commercial horses, including carriage horses in Bermuda.

The Minister of the Environment, Neletha Butterfield, tabled the regulations entitled The Care and Protection of Animals (Commercial Horse Stables) (Licensing) Regulations 2005 which will be added to the existing Care and Protection of Animals Act 1975.

The regulations state, amongst other things:

Where possible, horses shall be kept in shade during the hourly rest periods and while standing for hire.

A horse will also have access to drinking water during these hourly rest periods and will not be actively working for more than one hour without a minimum ten-minute rest period.

Horses shall not be worked for more than ten hours, including the hourly rest periods, during any 24-hour period.

Horses shall not be worked for more than six consecutive days without at least one full day of rest and on these days, weather permitting, shall be turned out into a paddock for at least two hours a day, or be engaged in controlled exercise for at least 30 minutes.

A horse is also considered to be working any time it is being used for commercial gain by any person, including the time standing for hire and travelling to and from the job site.

All commercial horses shall also be attended to at least twice a day ? with no more than 15 hours between these sessions.

As for the facilities where horses are kept, the regulations state that the building and premises used as a commercial horses facility has to comply with all the requirements of the Department of Planning and adhere to a variety of regulations which will be monitored.

Penalties for any person committing an offence against these regulations is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $500 for a first offence, on summary conviction to imprisonment for three months, or a fine of $1,000 for a second or subsequent offence and on summary of conviction where the offence is a continuing one to a fine of $100 for each day during which the refusal or failure to comply continues.

SPCA shelter chairman Andrew Madeiros said yesterday that the SPCA spearheaded the regulations about four years ago and sat down with the parties involved to draft some new ideas to update the existing 1975 Act.

?We formulated what we wanted and working with the Government came up with a new set of regulations for commercial stables,? he said.

However, the regulations will only apply in part to new commercial stables, while existing stables do not have to comply.

But Dr. Madeiros said there were a lot of things dealing with the conditions that horses are kept in including safety and health maintenance that are pertinent to everyone.

?This is an important and big step forward for us,? he said.

The SPCA has been fighting for almost a decade to improve the conditions of commercial horses in Bermuda.

?We still have some ongoing issues with existing commercial stables who will have to comply with these regulations, but we can now move forward thanks to these guidelines,? he said.