Calves not yet weaned remained up to forty hours without food: three animal protection NGOs denounce, Tuesday, July 11, the conditions under which these animals are transported from Ireland to the Netherlands via France.
The French association L214, the Irish Ethical Farming Ireland and the Dutch Eyes on Animals have announced that they are filing a complaint with the European Commission against these three countries for violation of a Community regulation relating to the protection of animals during transport, reported L214 in a press release.
In the event of a suspected breach of European rules, the Commission can ask the countries concerned to take corrective measures and take legal action in the European courts if the breach persists.
L214 has also announced that it is filing a parallel complaint for “serious abuse” and “ill treatment” against an animal transit center based in the Manche department, near Cherbourg. The association, which campaigns for the cessation of the exploitation of animals, also files “an action for liability against the French State for the deficiency of its veterinary services”.
Animals deprived of food and beaten
The organizations have filmed the different stages of the transport of animals which are not yet weaned and are fed substitute milk, their mothers continuing to produce milk in Ireland. They are loaded into livestock trucks, which are themselves embarked on ferries to France. They then hit the road again to join Dutch farms where they will be fattened.
The investigation “shows that the calves remained in the trucks without being fed for a period ranging from twenty-seven to forty hours”, according to L214, according to which the transport times observed systematically exceed the maximum limit of nineteen hours set by European regulations.
The footage of the transport “shows the handling and violent beating of the calves as they are fed and re-loaded into the trucks,” L214 adds.
The association plans to go to the French Ministry of Agriculture on Tuesday morning to submit a detailed report on its investigation.
From Ireland, “the live export of young calves represents up to 150,000 head per year, mainly in the spring during the peak of dairy births”, according to a report in 2021 from the French Livestock Institute (Idele) .
This same report pointed out that the export of these calves, which concerns less than 20% of calves from the Irish dairy herd, had been “recently called into question because of the long transport time to the European continent”, mainly to Spain and the Netherlands.