No food, grotesque transportation, barbaric slaughter – EU animal welfare must be better [Advocacy Lab Content]

Calves are spending long hours on transporters with no access to food, and cattle are taking long sea journeys in grotesque conditions, only to be slaughtered in barbaric facilities on arrival – animal welfare groups are demanding better from the EU.

In March EU agriculture ministers backed the European Commission’s initiatives on animal welfare, calling for tougher standards on transport, labelling, and slaughter in the next political mandate.

Irish Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue said: “We must do everything we can together to improve animal transport”.

“The fact that the animal is destined to die does not justify in any shape or form that [this] animal is exposed to substandard animal welfare standards or conditions,” said Jo Swabe, Senior Director of Public Affairs at Humane Society International Europe (HSI/Europe).

However, Dutch MEP Anja Hazekamp (The Left) remarked: “This new proposal leaves too much room for suffering, and it is only improvements on paper, and it will not help the animals in the way they are being transported.”

Raising standards

Ireland is noted to have less than acceptable standards in its live exports for the veal and beef trade. Being an island nation, the option of beef export requires a sea journey and the HSI is calling for not only better standards but an alternative to live exports.

“What is really needed instead is a trade in meat – transporting animals on the hook, rather than on the hoof,” says Swabe.

“One way to significantly reduce animal suffering and long-distance journeys is to ensure that animals are slaughtered more locally, and not being transported across Europe and then being shipped to the Middle East, or elsewhere, to be slaughtered under conditions that are probably far worse than our EU slaughterhouses,” she explained.

Under current conditions, unweaned calves are being transported from Ireland, via roll-off ferry which takes around eighteen hours to reach mainland Europe, before they arrive at veal farms in the likes of the Netherlands for fattening.

The new proposal raises the age-eligible for transport from two weeks old, to five weeks old. Surprisingly, the legislation will discount the travel time of animals at sea. “Any time spent onboard sea vessels should also be counted as transport time,” says Swabe.

Amending weaning age

Hazekamp says the new proposal is still not calf-friendly. “If you really want to improve this, then you have to have animals that are fully weaned and [that] depends on the animal – but between eight and ten weeks of age,” she says.

Raising the age until the weaning age will have an impact on the Irish export market says Irish MEP Billy Kelleher (Renew Europe).

“Critically, the issue of times on lorries and sea journey exemptions was very important from an Irish perspective. So, I was very clear that we would have to exempt the sea journey itself,” he said.

Currently, calves are not fed during their time on the boat.

“We have to try and get that balance right – between the age of the animal and whether or not the markets in the continent will accept animals if they are over a certain age,” he added.

Regarding the dairy seasonal calving period in Ireland (Jan-March), Kelleher finds few alternative options because it would cause “significant challenges” with 1.7 million dairy cows “within the space of 16 months, you would have 350,000 additional animals on the island of Ireland.”

“If you want to cull cows – then you’re culling families and you’re culling family farms, you’re culling ways of life, so I think we have to be very conscious that the dairy industry is not specifically just about cows,” Kelleher said asked why farmers are unwilling to change their systems.

“It’s about an agri-food sector that’s worth billions, that has a huge impact on the economy,” he remarked.

Receiving countries improvement

Kelleher, however, agrees that the EU’s live exports to third countries need repair, suggesting the EU needs to work with the receiving countries to ensure their standards meet those of the EU.

Hazekamp said she is very concerned that these countries do not meet these standards. “It is not incidental breaches of the legislation; it is structural breaches with severe suffering of the animals.”

“This new proposal still allows exports to third countries, which is absolutely horrific. These animals are sent to conflict areas like Lebanon, Libya, and Israel. We should not do that. We know how these animals are being slaughtered there and it’s very, very brutal, and the transport is (…) barbaric.”

Transporting suffering

“I’ve seen so many transports in my life, and it is really heartbreaking, and I think when you look into the animals’ eyes when they are being transported, you cannot ignore their suffering. We have some rules in place that are not being followed already, so we need even stricter rules and stricter enforcement,” she explained.

One of the worst cases of animal export suffering from the EU was in 2021 when two shipments of nearly 3,000 cattle spent three months at sea until they were finally brought back to Spain and slaughtered.

Rejected by every port they attempted to dock because the bulls were suspected of having blue tongue, a bovine disease, reports of the welfare of the animals make for an uncomfortable read – at one stage the bulls were fed on top of the carcases of those who hadn’t survived the journey.

“The only way to stop the suffering of animals is to ban life exports altogether,” says Hazekamp.

“My party is promoting a shift towards plant-based diets too because we cannot keep 8.5 billion animals in the European Union and slaughter them without affecting, of course, animal welfare, but also this whole animal agriculture sector has a big impact on biodiversity and climate change. We have to change our diets accordingly.”

[By Fiona Alston I Edited by Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]

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