06/12/21 A horror journey of future steaks: Tortured, trampled, hungry and thirsty
Animal Friends Croatia is calling for a petition to ban live exports at the EU level
-14th of June is marked as Ban Live Exports International Awareness Day
On the 14th of June 2015, 13.000 sheep died from dehydration, starvation and exhaustion on a boat trip from Romania to Somalia, where they were to be slaughtered. In commemoration of their horrific suffering and death, June 14th is marked as the Ban Live Exports International Awareness Day, which seeks to stop the transport of animals and point out the horrific conditions and cruelty to live animals in everyday transport.
"We have been warning for years that Croatia is also involved in a chain of disgusting and illegal animal cruelty. Animals transported through Croatia are most often from other countries, especially from Romania. On several occasions in the Istrian port of Raša, footage has been documented of scenes of painful boarding that lasts for days, although the ships and ramps are structurally completely unsuitable for transporting animals. Upon arrival on the ship, the animals are hungry, thirsty and completely exhausted, and they still have several days of agony on the high seas, in unhygienic conditions and without the presence of a veterinarian", warn Animal Friends Croatia.
They remind us that a few years ago the Croatian and world public were appalled by the footage of cows and sheep being loaded from trucks into ships: "Workers in Raša port were relentlessly hitting exhausted animals with clubs and torturing them with electroshocks. A bull, which fell over from exhaustion, had an electric shocker thrust into his anal opening to make him get up. Unfortunately, harassment and negligence are no exception, but a standard practice in transporting cattle, pigs, sheep and other animals that people eat."
Every year, hundreds of millions of farm animals, loaded into trucks and ships, travel thousands of kilometers across Europe for days, and transport outside the EU includes the import and export of animals to and from Third World countries. In transport, being crowded, they spend days exposed not only to hunger and thirst but also to extreme weather conditions, subjected to brutal and routine abuse. Many animals are run over by their companions and suffer for hours from terrible injuries and pain until they die.
But even during loading and unloading, workers hit them with their feet, hands, blunt and/or sharp objects, electroshock rods, push them and throw them off loading ramps. They end up with broken limbs, necks and spines. "In order for workers to encourage exhausted and apathetic animals to get out of trucks or ships, they bend, crush and break their tails, stick their fingers in their eyes, stab them with sharp objects, lift and lower them with cranes, push them with forklifts... Transportation also has disastrous ecological consequences because the animals spend several days in inadequate conditions at the terminals, creating a huge amount of feces," Animal Friends Croatia elaborated in truly nauseating details.
Despite the existing precise legal regulations of the European Union on the transport of animals, most transporters completely violate the provisions of the law. Overcrowding, lack of food and water for animals and exceeding the allowed duration of the trip are the most common forms of breaking the law. Animal Friends Croatia, as a part of the international organization Eurogroup for Animals, advocates that the European Commission act decisively and completely ban the practice of transporting live animals in the Member States.
They indicate that farms, slaughterhouses, farms, markets, trucks, planes or ships, therefore, places where a large number of animals are gathered, raised and transported, are ideal for the spread of infections and the development of new infectious diseases including Covid-19, SARS, MERS, mad cow disease, swine and bird flu and many others. There has been a worldwide struggle for decades to stop the killing of animals by transport, and the current pandemic provides an additional reason to enact a clear legal ban on the transport of live animals.
Animal Friends Croatia emphasizes that a healthy, plant-based diet is the most effective way to save animals from the agony of transportation, about which more can be learned at www.whyveg.com/hr. On the occasion of the Ban Live Exports International Awareness Day, they invite everyone to take a look at www.youtube.com/afcroatia, which all animals experience in transport on a daily basis.