ANDA (Spanish animal welfare organization) and Animals‘ Angels follow a transport with calves from Cádiz to Gran Canaria. The approximately eight months-old calves come from Romania in the first place and have been freighted to northern Spain. Now the journey to the final destination, a slaughterhouse, continues. The animals are on the road from northern Spain to Gran Canaria for about four days. They are not being discharged during the extremely long journey and have to stay inside the truck the whole time. The hauler has not even packed feed for them. The animals will stay on Gran Canaria for three months until slaughtering. For every imported animal the buyer on Gran Canaria gets a noteworthy amount of subsidies. Only due to this fact the business is profitable, he explains to us. Without subsidies meat instead of live animals would be transported to the island. He emphasizes that “he” has been lucky in regards to this transport because normally “one animal bites the dust during each transport”, this time all of them survived. ANDA and Animals’ Angels believe that subsidies are a violation of EU law, because the EU transport regulation starts from the premise that animal transport are ought to be restricted as far as possible and not, like in this case, to be encouraged. This example once again shows that animals inside the European Union are not treated like sentient beings (like stated in the EU- treaty) but as goods.
