Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
No end to our fight for animal rights Ports still ferrying out livestock and no Welsh Lucy’s Law in sight
TODAY lorries crammed with livestock are due to arrive at Ramsgate in Kent where they will be loaded on to a ferry.
They will have travelled from Scotland and once across the Channel, will continue their gruelling journey through France and into Spain and possibly beyond, into North Africa, where the animals can be slaughtered in unspeakable conditions.
It will be the first shipment of livestock from the port since March 13.
Lockdown put a temporary halt to this dreadful trade, sometimes in sheep and sometimes in calves so young that they have not been weaned.
Back in 2018, Boris Johnson called the practice barbaric and agreed with campaigners saying farm animals should be slaughtered in this country and then exported – “on the hook, not on the hoof ”.
But instead of action we’ve had prevarication.
A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the Government was committed to ending the practice and is swinging into inaction by saying it will be “launching a public consultation in due course”.
Worse, the Scottish Government is actively opposing a judicial review launched by Compassion in World Farming, which argues that journeys for calves of over eight hours with no food or water breaks are unlawful.
“The Government has hinted strongly that it wants to end this trade but has done nothing,” said CIWF’S chief policy adviser Peter
Stevenson. “The Scottish Government says it wants to consult with stakeholders and wants the judicial review to be postponed.
“I am so disappointed and angry.” A Scottish Government spokesman would not comment on the judicial review while proceedings are ongoing but said it was “committed to consulting” on the issue.
So, more talk, less action.
Which sums up progress in Wales on another burning animal welfare issue, Lucy’s Law.
This has already come into force in England where it is now illegal for puppies to be sold by shops and anyone else who is not the breeder, dealing a hammer blow to cruel commercial breeders who hide behind closed doors.
Yet Wales, which is the epicentre of the mass commercial breeding of puppies in the UK, has still not acted.
Next month it will be two years since I joined a rally at the Welsh Assembly in support of urgent change, but the optimism of that day, which saw a unanimous backing for
Lucy’s Law, has been followed by disappointment and delay.
Lesley Griffiths, Welsh minister for the Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, said last week that she wants new regulations to come into force “as quickly as possible”, while saying there should first be consultation with “key stakeholders” including, bizarrely, children.
A Welsh Government spokesman said “work on new legislation to ban the third-party sale of puppies is under way”.
Conservative member of the Welsh parliament, Andrew RT Davies, has called the delay a travesty, tweeting: “Pull your finger out Welsh Labour Government!”
Eileen Jones runs Friends of Animals Wales, which has long been rescuing dogs that are dumped by puppy farms when they become too sick to breed.
“We are totally disillusioned by a process that seems to go nowhere,” she says.
“During lockdown thousands of pups have been bought through online advertisements.
“If Lucy’s Law had been law in Wales it would have been much harder to sell them and offenders could have been fined.
“How incredibly sad that not only have many puppy purchasers faced the heartbreak and financial repercussions of buying sick pups, the poor mothers who should have gained their freedom have been retained to churn out more litters.”