We are on the road again in Italy. We´ve been waiting to find the trucks transporting lambs from Hungary and Romania to Italy. Usually the trade increases before Christmas. And indeed from our position we can see a continuous coming and going of animal transports, especially steers in Slovenian and Croatian trucks. We have already found a few trucks with Hungarian lambs, between 2 and 4 months old. Babies. They were going to the slaughterhouse in central and southern Italy.
Only in one case did we find Romanian lambs and they were bigger: the transport conditions were worse for them. If the profit margins for lamb transports are based on a certain number of animals to be loaded on each truck, obviously the bigger they are, the more they are crammed and the worse the transport conditions become. We therefore called in the Italian police. For the umpteenth time, a penalty was imposed for having crammed the lambs onto four floors instead of three, so that they hadn`t room above their heads. They were so crushed that they even touched the ceiling of the floors with their backs.
Despite all we want to think there is one, albeit tiny, silver lining. Although the transport of steers is unbelievably incessant, we note that that of lambs has decreased, for some reason. We do not know if the pandemic has caused a lower demand, which does not explain why it is different for other species, but for us it is a small consolation that helps us to continue.
