Live Exports and Transporting Animals

Ga Maleven

Animals in animal agriculture are raised in one area, the factory farms or “local farms,” but slaughtered in another location. They are never slaughtered in the same location, whether that location be down the road, or on another continent.

Two methods of transporting animals are used: Live export and trucks.

Live export is when animals are transported, alive, from one country they are raised in, but then shipped to another country for slaughter. The reason for this is the belief that it’s “fresher” to kill the animals closer to where their flesh will be sold, but regardless by the time the flesh is in stores it’s already over a week old and beginning the decomposition process. Freezing it during shipping time wouldn’t change this at all.

Live export is incredibly cruel. Thousands of animals are loaded onto huge ships, packed so tightly together in pens they can barely move. A factory farm on a ship, basically. Many of the animals are pregnant, and they must all live in their own excrement for the weeks it takes to travel across the ocean.

Animals in live export experience extreme heat or extreme cold, living in their waste, little food, no comfort, no medical care, and most will die before they even arrive at their destination. In some cases, entire ships have been sunk due to damage to the ship or bad weather, drowning all those aboard. Trapped in their pens, already weak from being born on factory farms, many sick and/or pregnant, they are unable to escape as the water surges into the ship. A horrible, terrifying way to die, drowning in feces filled water, scared and not sure why they were forced to suffer like this.

For those who do survive a sunken ship, or a ship that arrives perfectly fine to port, they are loaded onto trucks and sent to slaughterhouses, where they suffer incredibly callous and horrifying deaths with the label “humane” stamped on the packages containing their mutilated corpses.

Removing the animals, whether they be bovines, goats, sheep, pigs, horses, etc. from the ship may be beating them with sticks and herding them into truck trailers, or they might be lifted out of the ship with a crane. Chains or ropes will be tied around their stomachs or necks, and they will be painfully lifted out and lowered into the back of trucks. Not all will survive this.

From there, they will be transported by trucks.

Being transported by truck trailer to slaughter, whether directly from a factory farm, “local farm,” or ship is all the same. The animals can be inside of the truck for 1-5 days, depending on the distance needed, and receive no food, water, or care. In freezing temperatures animals often freeze to the sides of the truck and need to be “peeled” off with tools such as shovels. In the summer, it can become so hot in the trailers, well over 120°F (50°C), that the animals suffer heat strokes and severe distress.

The animals are packed so tightly together they can’t even move, causing such anxiety they will bite each other and panic. Larger animals, such as bovines, horses, pigs, etc. are loaded onto large metal trailers, sometimes with two levels. Smaller animals, such as chickens, turkeys, cats, dogs, etc. are crammed tightly into wire cages they can’t even move. It is common for birds to lose entire legs from being jammed so tightly their legs stick out from holes in the cages, only to be ripped off from cages being slammed together or thrown around.

Cows, especially from dairy farms, are often times pregnant while being transported and sometimes give birth on the way to the slaughterhouse. Even the babies will be slaughtered.

From life till death not a single moment in the life of an animal labeled as “food” is respectful, dignified, nor kind. They suffer every moment along the way all for things we simply do not need.

The only time these animals will ever know kindness is from vigils. Vigils are when activists will stop the trucks at the slaughterhouses to give water to the dehydrated animals and document them. They are so battered and abused many can’t even walk off the trucks, or are suffering abscesses, tumors, gaping wounds, etc. These are documented by the activists, the only people who care for the animals, to help show the world how cruel and unnecessary animal agriculture is. Most vigils are held by the Animal Save Movement group, and can be joined in most cities around the world. This is the easiest thing you can do to bear witness to animal suffering, and actually see if what vegans say is true or not.

It is the only love they will receive just before an unimaginable and horrifying death. Even before leaving the trucks they can smell the blood, hear the shrieks of pain from those before them, and they know.

It is because of this fear and knowing something awful is coming many slaughterhouses will employ a “Judas” animal. This is an animal who lives at the slaughterhouse, and just as Judas betrayed Jesus, these animals are used to lure in the terrified animals, usually the babies, onto the kill floor. The Judas animal will be allowed to leave before any killing happens, but for the other animals, there will be no compassion shown.

Transporting animals for slaughter is just as inhumane as raising them for meat, dairy, and eggs.