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'Help the Horses' Campaign
Background
Certain countries in Europe, predominantly France, Belgium and Italy,
consume horsemeat. This results in a massive Live Transportation trade
involving many European countries.
Animal Welfare groups, and the UK's general public, have long opposed the
live export trade. It has never been necessary to tackle this issue in
the UK though as the rules preventing the export of live horses for meat are
already established. Sadly, no such
rules are in place in any other European country. European horse traders
scour Europe to find the cheapest animals and, since the break-up of the
Soviet Union, their attention has focused on the newly emerged trading
opportunities with these countries. Recently, Italian horse traders have
centered their attention on the horses in Lithuania. This has resulted in
horrendously long journeys for the horses as they are forced to endure a
crossing of six or more international borders.
In Autumn of 1999, Naturewatch funded a major investigation into the export of live horses from Lithuania to Italy. The German organisation Animals' Angels, who have been monitoring live exports throughout Europe for a number of years, gave expert guidance to the Lithuanian State Veterinary Service, Lithuanian Society for the Protection of Animals (LSPA), Lithuanian television and Ben Noreikis (our full-time representative and co-ordinator) in their investigations.
European Union legislation states that after every 8 hours of travel
the horses must be given food and water. They are allowed to
travel for 24 hours before having a 24 hour break. Both the exporters and the Italian
border officials blatantly disregard these laws and they know that by avoiding EU
countries they are avoiding prosecution too. As usual, it comes down to money and how cheaply the animals can be transported. Time is money: the faster the
horse traders can get the animals to their destination, the more journeys they can
complete each month. At the point of departure each lorry load of horses
(approximately 20 at a time) has a value of £5,000, but when the lorry arrives in
Italy the retail value becomes an astounding £70,000.
You can see why the horse traders are keen to get the horses to the destination in the shortest time possible because a few extra journeys each month gives substantial extra revenue. With horses crammed into lorries many are injured and some even die during the gruelling journey, which lasts up to 4 days. The horses are only given one short break en-route of about 2 hours, they are rarely unloaded and are lucky if they receive adequate food and water. The Italians do not care about enforcing EU legislation and have maintained that EU rules only apply once the transporter has arrived on EU territory.
The countries of destination, and their traders, do not want live export replaced by the export of chilled meat because fresh meat can be sold at a larger premium over chilled meat. However, Naturewatch believe that all live export is inherently cruel and we hope one day that this trade will cease.
One of the aims of the campaign is to encourage the Lithuanian Government to fund (via European Union grants) the development of local facilities to change the trade from 'live export' to 'meat export' only - 'on the hook' as opposed to 'on the hoof'. Sadly, this will be a long and hard battle. In the meantime, we need to focus on more strict and rigid enforcement of existing EU animal protection laws.
Ultimately, our main aim is to see an end to live animal transport from Eastern Europe by encouraging the export of chilled meat instead. Naturewatch enjoys strong links with Lithuania and our representative in Kaunas is working to encourage the Lithuanian Government to prepare a submission to the European Union for funds to develop local facilities.
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