TRANSPORT TORTURE: Shipping chaos kills 1,800 cows, fueling calls for animal ban
The report concluded that animals are huffing and puffing for days because of heat stress, they haven’t eaten or they’re covered in sores. That’s suffering and animal cruelty.
BLOOMBERG: In late December, some 1,800 cows left Spain for Turkey aboard a ship called the Elbeik. The trip was supposed to take around 11 days, then the cattle were to be sold, mostly to halal slaughterhouses, where they’d be killed with minimal suffering, as required by religious law… For the next three months, as the pandemic began to wreak havoc on global shipping, the vessel failed to unload its cargo, and the animals began to starve, according to an investigation by the Spanish government. Nearly 10% of the bulls died, their corpses thrown overboard or left to fester in the pens among the living. When the Elbeik returned to Spain, authorities ruled its remaining 1,600 animals were too sick to sell and had to be put down.
The Elbeik has become Exhibit A in the mounting case to ban the controversial, $18 billion cross-border trade in live animals. The pandemic has worsened conditions for the roughly 2 billion cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens that are exported each year, and epidemiologists have joined the calls for reform. Animals have been stuck in transit far longer than expected and safety inspections have been dramatically curtailed. With new sensitivity to risks that diseased animals can pose to humans, a growing number of countries are limiting or phasing out the practice altogether…
The EU, which accounts for more than 75% of the world’s live animal exports, is “incapable of guaranteeing animal welfare,” according to a report commissioned by the committee, which is expected to recommend a new, tighter set of regulations for exporters by the end of the year. The U.K. has gone further, planning to ban the transport of live animals for slaughter altogether, though it hasn’t set a date yet. New Zealand in April said it will phase out trade in live animals by 2023…
Even in normal times, live animals are considered cargo, and a ship full of sheep is more or less treated the same as one full of wool sweaters as far as most port authorities and shipping industry regulators are concerned. “We don’t look at the cargo or animal welfare,” said Maarten Vlag, secretary of the Paris maritime coalition that oversees ports from the U.K. to Russia. “We look if the ship is overloaded because that affects seaworthiness, but it makes no difference if it’s 10,000 containers or 10,000 animals”…
Most livestock vessels are old, converted to carry animals at the end of their run, said Vlag. That also puts the cargo at risk. “Fifty-year-old ships are hard to maintain, let alone find the spare parts that no one manufactures anymore”…Before the mass euthanasia on the Elbeik, the official veterinary report found that iron pipes in the pens of the ship were broken or had rusted areas with sharp elements that may have scratched or hurt the cattle. The pipes that supplied drinking water to the animals leaked.
The report also concluded that the animals on board had suffered. It cited eye, skin and motor issues in the bulls, as well as weight loss leading in extreme cases to cachexia, a disorder that causes muscles wasting. “Some of these cachectic animals were in a state of stupor, unable to open their eyes or respond to stimuli,” the vet wrote…
Mortality statistics are only the most extreme evidence of animal suffering, said Foster of Vets Against Live Exports. “Animals are huffing and puffing for days because of heat stress, they haven’t eaten or they’re covered in sores. That’s suffering and animal cruelty, but they’re not dead,” she said. “It’s difficult to know when boats are going, where they’re going to and what’s on board. It’s an industry that’s shrouded in secrecy and a lack of transparency.”
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has said live animal transport is “ideally suited for spreading disease… Still, industry trade groups including the Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council said current regulations are adequate and the threat to public health isn’t any greater than conditions found on farms. Australia exported more than 2.3 million livestock in 2019-20; after picking up the trade that New Zealand is set to ban, the nation’s industry will be worth an estimated $1.9 billion.
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