It’s just after midnight at a factory farm in South Jutland, Denmark, and 170 pigs are being loaded onto a waiting transport lorry. The animals are beginning a two day journey that will take them halfway around the world, starting with an overland trip down to the German border, before travelling the length of the country and exiting into Luxembourg. 

From there the consignment heads to the international airport, where the pigs are unloaded and transferred onto a jet that will fly them more than 10,000 kilometres to Cambodia. The animals are then disembarked and loaded onto another truck that takes them - finally - to a facility somewhere south of the capital Phnom Penh. Danish pigs are prized as breeding stock internationally. These animals have been bought by a global agribusiness that operates industrial farms across Asia.            

In eastern France, in the La Chevillotte region not far from the Swiss border, 31 cattle are taken from a farm to begin a journey that will see them in transit for more than a week - eight days and 20 hours - as they are driven, via Poland and the former USSR, to their eventual destination in Uzbekistan. The central Asian country is a regular importer of EU cattle.   

In Northern Ireland, in the UK, at an assembly centre (facilities where livestock destined for export are collected together) more than 350 sheep are starting what will be their final journey. They are loaded up, then trucked then shipped then trucked again - via Dublin port in Eire and Cherbourg on France’s channel coast - to the Occitanie region in the south of the country. After a journey lasting almost three days, the sheep arrive at an abattoir where they will be slaughtered and processed.  

Peter Stevenson, an expert on the trade at CIWF and the report’s lead author said that “although we knew that millions of animals were enduring cruel and unnecessary journeys in the name of profit, this research shows that the situation is far worse than we had feared. The EU must address this as a matter of urgency.”

Anja Hazekamp, a Dutch MEP, said she was shocked at the findings. “It is unsustainable to keep as many animals as we do in the European Union. We cause a lot of problems for animal welfare, climate, biodiversity and for human health”, she said. “We need to eliminate long distance transport, rather than transporting animals all over Europe and to the other side of the world. It is ridiculous that animals are sent as far as Brazil and Colombia.”

Transnational trade

Reineke Hameleers, CEO of EFA, called for a transition towards a trade in meat and carcasses, rather than live animals, saying the "transnational nature of live exports makes it challenging to protect the welfare of animals.”

Responding to the findings, a spokesperson for the European Commission said that it had been working to improve animal welfare for over 40 years, "progressively improving the lives of animals and adopting welfare standards in legislation that are amongst the highest in the world." 

"Animal welfare is and will remain a priority for the Commission. An example is the adoption in early 2023 of new rules on the transport of animals by sea. The Farm to Fork Strategy foresees a revision of the EU’s animal welfare legislation. This preparatory work is ongoing, covering legislation for the welfare of animals at farm level, during transport, at the time of killing and to establish a voluntary European label for animal welfare."

The spokesperson said that the proposal on the protection of animals during transport, one of the four legs of the legislation, is the most advanced and will be presented in December 2023.

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Some of the longest overland journeys - such as the transport of thousands of cattle and sheep by road to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia - were found to last up to three weeks.

Many animals are transported by boat, the report says, with 63% of livestock exported out of the EU found to be travelling by sea. In the 19 month period documented in the report, 217,000 sheep were transported from Spain to Saudi Arabia on journeys taking up to 18 days. 

Fatalities

Such journeys can often involve poor conditions and animal fatalities. In 2019, 14,000 sheep drowned in the Black Sea when a ship transporting them from Romania to Saudi Arabia capsized. Even before boarding, campaigners say, animals are often held at ports for extended periods in stationary and unventilated trucks, subjecting animals to heat stress. 

EU regulation necessitates animals receive a welfare check at ports to ensure they are healthy enough to continue their journeys. Yet campaigners cite a European Commission report which recently found that “in many cases [records of these checks are] poor or do not exist.”

The biggest livestock boats can transport as many as 18,000 cattle or 75,000 sheep, yet it’s alleged that on board some vessels there are no crew members responsible for welfare, meaning diseased or injured animals can go untreated. 

The new records also show how some live animals - mainly pigs - have been transported by air to countries as far afield as Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia. Others were flown to destinations in Africa, including Cameroon, Ghana and Uganda. 

Many of the journeys cited involve unweaned, infant calves and lambs. Over 300,000 unweaned calves were estimated to have been transported between EU member states each year between 2019 and 2021. “Most of these calves are the unwanted male calves from the dairy sector. These tiny animals, often just two to three weeks of age, are frail and quite unsuited for transport,” the authors note.  

Hunger and thirst

“They do not yet eat solid food. They depend for nutrition on milk or milk replacer (powdered milk mixed with water). However, it is not possible to give calves milk replacer while they are on board a truck. And so they are driven on long journeys without feed and often without water, resulting in hunger, thirst and increased vulnerability to disease.” 

EU regulations currently allow unweaned calves to be transported on journeys of over 8 hours once they are 14 days old. 

The report also alleges the inaccurate recording of some transport times, with many journeys taking longer than officially stated. 60% of the journeys recorded in the logs started from assembly centres. These are sites where animals from different farms are unloaded and held ready to be reassigned to trucks for the next part of their journeys. 

One of the alleged “tricks of the trade”, say researchers, sees transport organisers record assembly centres as the original point of departure, despite animals having already been in transit from farms. This means the operators could be extending the legal permitted travelling time. 

EU regulation stipulates a resting period of at least 48 hours at an animal’s place of departure before journeys can begin. However, at assembly centres, the time required is only 6 hours. This means animals can be transported for hours before reaching assembly centres, only to be quickly transported again.

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It is not just welfare that’s compromised by the controversial trade. Experts have warned of the potential spread of antibiotic resistant “superbugs” as contaminated livestock are trucked, shipped and flown across Europe and internationally.        

Antibiotics are used on farms both to treat disease and - until recently, with the introduction of tougher EU regulations - preventatively to stop pathogens spreading. Poor livestock management and housing conditions, close proximity of animals and stress, often associated with intensive livestock production, can lead to an increased spread of disease and higher use of antibiotics. 

Superbugs

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics: the continual exposure causes them to evolve and develop resistance to drugs that would otherwise kill them. When these drugs no longer work, it can render doctors (and vets) powerless or severely hamper their ability to treat previously treatable illnesses — in humans and animals.

Around the world, an estimated 700,000 people now die each year from infections caused by bacteria that have become immune to antibiotic treatments. A UK Government review predicted that by 2050 this number could rise to 10 million deaths a year, costing the global economy $100 trillion.

Last year, a scientific assessment into the issue published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) identified that “long journeys that require rests in assembly centres and control posts are associated with higher risks, due to specific factors such as close contacts with animals from different farms, environmental contamination and stress.”

The assessment also found that “minimising transport duration” and thoroughly cleaning vehicles, equipment and spaces where animals are loaded and unloaded were “some of the measures considered effective in reducing the transmission of resistant bacteria during animal transport.” 

A spokesperson for EFSA said: "EFSA’s findings help to identify measures to reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance, as well as unnecessary pain, distress and suffering for animals during transport. It’s important to note that the planning, implementation and evaluation of any potential action taken to protect consumers, animals and the environment is in the hands of the legislators."

Some major EU exporters of livestock are known to be hotspots for antibiotic resistant diseases. In Denmark, a key exporter of pigs, almost 90% of the country’s pig herds are now thought to be contaminated with livestock variants of the superbug MRSA. An investigation previously highlighted how breeding animals from Danish farms known to be contaminated were free to be exported owing to regulatory loopholes. 

In Spain, official data shows that large numbers of pigs are infected with salmonella, and that as many as 30% of these may carry drug-resistant strains.       

Increased use 

Other nations involved in the trade in live farm animals have recorded sharp increases in veterinary usage of some “critically important” antibiotics in recent years, including Poland, Romania, Portugal and Greece.    

Some experts say that longer livestock transport journeys can themselves increase the need for treatment with antibiotics. “Animals, even if they are domesticated, are not built for standing still, which they have to do in long haul transport. That will cause health problems, and then you need to treat them,” Professor Sternberg Lewerin, Professor in Epizootiology & Disease Control at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, said. 

She said that increasing use of antibiotics remains part of the problem: “We’re trying to fix the effect of transporting and moving animals around instead of trying to reduce the moving around.”