A team from Animals' Angels inspects animal transports in Italy. We find a truck from Hungary, on board are male and female cattle. We want to document the transport conditions and the state of the animals and decide to accompany the truck south - for almost 27 hours.
At one stop we can take a look at the animals inside: The female cattle are docile and appear exhausted. The bulls, on the other hand, are very excited. With their huge bodies, they also make the transporter sway with every movement. The floor in the truck is barely bedded and therefore wet and slippery. The fact that transporters save on bedding makes us angry every time. The effort is low - and the animals would at least not have to stand and lie in their own excrement.
But it makes us even more angry that the transporter uses a trick to circumvent the legally required 24-hour break for the animals. The destination is wrongly indicated in the papers as a stable far before the transports’ actual destination. Here the cattle are unloaded for less than half the required time. They are then transported on to the actual destination: a stable on the island of Sicily.
For many years we have been documenting and criticizing the fact that break times are circumvented with false information in the route planning – at the expense of the animals. We report the case to the responsible authorities and demand an investigation.
