'This one has heat stress': the shocking reality of live animal exports

The global demand for meat means more animals are moved around the world than ever before. Activists say the conditions they endure are intolerable – and we are all turning a blind eye
At the Kapikule border crossing between Turkey and Bulgaria, Lesley Moffat charges forward, clipboard in hand, marching alongside the parked lorries loaded with live cows and sheep waiting in this no man’s land to be exported from the EU. Sometimes, the animals are left on the lorries for days, stuck inside metallic freight containers barely shielded from the blinding sun as truckers, bureaucrats, importers and exporters haggle over paperwork and fees.
The cows struggle to bring their heads close to the fresh air. Their containers are filled with urine and manure, levels of ammonia steadily rising inside the trailers as journeys wear on. Moffat – the founder of the Dutch-based charity Eyes on Animals – sticks her hand through the grating of one lorry to check the animals’ water supply. “Look at this,” she says, grabbing at the hay stuck into the water trough and pointing to the dung clogging it. “It gets full of dirty straw and shit, and they can never drink from it,” she says. “The drivers need to give them water in buckets.”
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from The Guardian Read More