‘Barbaric’ live sheep exports must stop
Brexit may help speed up ban but there are ‘no guarantees’
THANKFULLY unaware of the fate awaiting them, the sheep in three trucks were loaded onto a ferry then shipped off abroad.
The animals, stuffed into threestorey trailers, had just endured a journey all the way from the North of England.
There’s no knowing how long their journey lasted when they left on the open-decked converted Russian tank transporter the MV Joline, registered in Riga, Latvia.
And there’s no knowing how good or bad the conditions at their destination might be.
The live export of animals like these sheep leaving Ramsgate in Kent last Wednesday is a scandal that welfare campaigners have been trying to stop for years.
Latest figures show that more than 4,000 live sheep are shipped out of the UK every year in a trade that the RSPCA has branded “unacceptable and unnecessary”.
Ian Birchall of the local group Kent Action Against Live Exports watched the latest consignment of sheep leave Ramsgate, saying: “This is a barbaric practice and it needs to end.”
Another protestor, Kristie Williams, said: “No creatures should suffer like this, there is no need for this to happen, they don’t need to make this journey alive.”
The National Farmers’ Union insists: “The ability to export live animals provides an important option for livestock producers in selling their high-value product.”
But a petition to ban the trade attracted more than 100,000 signatures earlier this year, resulting
in a debate in Parliament, and Environment Secretary Michael Gove saying he wanted the cruel practice to end as soon as possible.
He’ll have cross-party support if he does bring a proposed ban before Parliament. When Labour launched its animal welfare plan in February, a ban on exporting live animals for fattening and slaughter was the first issue it cited.
At the Tory party conference earlier this month, MP Theresa Villiers told a fringe meeting of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation: “We have a moral obligation to the animals we rear in this country that they are not sent overseas to be potentially slaughtered in brutal conditions.”
But with so much support for a ban, why hasn’t it already been introduced?
The problem is that European Union rules on the free movement of goods make a ban impossible until the UK leaves.
“Brexit presents us with a unique opportunity to help end the misery for many farm animals and end live exports for slaughter and fattening outright,” said Lorraine Platt, co-founder of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.
“The UK was the first country in the EU to ban cruel veal crates, yet we continue to export farm animals for fattening to systems on the continent which are illegal here.
“We urge the Government to introduce a bill in Parliament to ban live exports so that the ban is ready to come into force on the day that the UK leaves the EU.”
Even leaving the EU, however, is no guarantee that the trade will be consigned to history.
Rather than being asked to look at an outright ban, the Government’s Farm Animal Welfare Committee has been asked for guidelines merely on improving the transport conditions. That has left animal welfare campaigners fearing that the Government is backsliding on the previous hopeful noises it was making.
‘‘ No creatures should suffer like this. There is no need for this to happen