LIVESTOCK REFORMS MOOTED

The smell generated immediately generates questions as to what life is like onboard for both crew and the animal cargo. The publication of a new report by the Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF) and recent events involving Spain and Turkey, however, provide a much greater incentive to consider reforms to the maritime transport of livestock.

The AWF report focuses on 78 EU certified vessels and draws some damming conclusions, including:

• The global average age for scrapping vessels is 30 years. The vessels studied, however, already averaged 29 years when they were converted into EU-approved livestock carriers.
• Fifty-five per cent of the vessels are registered under flags from risk and high risk countries as defined by the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MoU).
• Fifty-three of the vessels have been detained on numerous occasions by Paris MoU port state control, with over two thirds of them classed by non-IACS class societies.

The net conclusion drawn from these and allied findings, by a number of involved parties, is that the European Commission is not doing enough to regulate the call of such vessels at EU Ports.

Typically, Reineke Hameleers, CEO, Eurogroup for Animals, the pan-European advocacy organisation for animals, states: “This new study proves once again that live animal export is not a correct practice with regards to animals, humans and the environment.

“The only solution,” he suggests, “is to revise the Transport Regulation to limit as much as possible the unnecessary suffering that live transport implies. With our ‘No Animal Left Behind’ campaign we’re calling on the Commission to forbid live export to third countries and intra-EU long distance journeys and to set species and category specific requirements for the remaining journeys”

Adding further fuel to the fire of the case for reform is recent experience with the vessels Karim Allah and El Beik which left the port of Cartagena, Spain in December within one day of each other bound for Turkey. The former had 895 cattle aboard and the latter nearly 1800 cows. On arrival, however, both vessels were not permitted to discharge their cargoes due to concerns over an outbreak of the insect borne bluetongue disease in the province of Huesca, Spain.

The Karim Allah ended up back in Cartagena near the end of February and subsequent to this Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture determined all the cattle onboard should be slaughtered. The El Beik also returned to Cartagena in March where the same fate befell her much larger cargo. There certainly appear to be good grounds for reforms to be considered in conjunction with this controversial trade.