Transporting live animals long distances to the abattoirs.

Around 3 million sheep, lambs, calves, pigs, cows, oxen and horses are transported, each year, from one country to another, on European roads. This movement of trucks loaded with animals, in the majority of cases, means long days of 50, 70, 90 or more hours journey, onto which can frequently be added inhumane treatment and bad transport conditions. A report precisely from the European Commission summarized this sad trade: “long distance transport in overloaded vehicles together with dehydration, produces suffering and a high animal death rate”. Quite often, during these long days, the animals do not receive any food, water, or appropriate rest. When overloading is produced, the animals that are piled in are squashed between each other, causing the weakest to fall over, and it is very difficult for them to get up again, therefore they are stepped on and crushed by the other animals. Videos and reports have emphazised on numerous occasions how the European Directive ruling this kind of transport is flagrantly disobeyed.

Nearly a million pigs a year are sent from Holland to Spain and Italy, to be fattened up and again transported back to Holland to be sacrificed.

Hundreds of thousands of lambs and sheep are exported from Great Britain to be killed in Greece or Italy. More that two hundred thousand bovine stock animals are exported from Germany and Ireland to Spain and Italy.

Thousand of horses are sent from Poland and Lithuania to the Italian abattoirs.

Millions of sheep are transported, in huge vessels, from Australia and New Zealand to the Middle East. Between 10,000 and 110,000 animals, on each trip which can last between 12 and 28 days, depending of the port of destiny.

Although transporting birds to the slaughterhouse is much shorter, the conditions in which they are taken are also traumatic and inappropriate.

The list of animal cargoes transported between Europe and other continents to be fattened up or killed, thousands of kilometres from their country of origin, is very long and represents a huge global problem. The longer and more inhumane the transport, more the animals suffer from stress, becoming weaker and dehydrated. Other risks, of a health and illness nature, are added to the problem. ADDA, as a member of the European Coalition for the well-being of Farm Animals, ECFA, has actively participated and collaborated, for years, in numerous petitioning and denouncing campaigns at Spanish and European level.

CAMPAIGN AND ALTERNATIVES

• Suspension of European grants which in part, provoke this kind of transport.
• Reform the European Directive by forbidding transport for long periods.
• Guard, control and strictly comply with the regulations.
• Denounce irregularities.
• Suspend long distance transport.