(2011, August 3rd)

Italian Horse Protection is the Italian partner for the campaign led by Animals’ Angels in Europe to ask for a 8-hour maximum limit for the transportation of living, slaughter-bound animals.

The current terrible conditions during transportation have been revealed by videos taken by Animals’ Angels volunteers during their investigations, during which they followed the trucks along their “journeys of death”, in order to document and denounce the animals’ terrible sufferings. They are hard, graphic images, scenes we must stop once for all.

Why so many living animals are transported for thousands of kilometers in order to be slaughtered, instead of slaughtering them in their country of origin, and then transport their meat?

Here there are some answers:

1) In many European countries, the public financial support to agriculture has led to a “over production” of animals, so the “in excess” animals are sent to other countries. Moreover, sometimes there are other kind of financial supports too, such the one for calves: there is in fact a help for exportation and an absence of custom taxes for the importation of living animals;
2) Agriculture is now as specialized as industry and the animals are just parts of a productive process, the various “factories” located where they are most profitable: so the breeding farms are often located in countries where the costs of hay, feeds, salaries and the standard of animal welfare are especially low;
3) For the same reason, the slaughtering too is concentrated in a few, big slaughterhouses, built with European funds, which obviously must use their full productive capacity to be profitable;
4) Often times there are also religious or “cultural” reasons: IE, a lot of calves are moved from Germany to Spain to be fattened up, because in Spain they can be kept in conditions that would be illegal in Germany. Another example: horses are almost always transported alive, because it is said the consumers in the importing countries (such Italy and France) would not accept to eat meat that arrived refrigerated.

It is time to change this situation: by signing our petition you can help us to reach the one million signatures we are aiming for.

Download the attached form, gather the signatures of your friends, colleagues, relatives and send us the filled forms. Help us to put an end to these useless suffering.

Watch IHP’s video with the images taken by Animals’ Angels.