Common problems seen by Israeli vets that inspect these ships were poor ventilation, high temperatures, intense humidity, high levels of ammonia, wet bedding, and animal injury and suffocation from overcrowding.
SUE SURKES: ‘A damning report about conditions aboard ships that transport live animals for fattening and slaughter in Israel has emerged from within Israel’s Agriculture Ministry for the first time. Dr. Lauren Stein, a veterinary inspector in the ministry’s import and export department, told a closed workshop held in Romania earlier this month about the “common problems” seen by Israeli vets that inspect these ships, among them poor ventilation, high temperatures and intense humidity, high levels of ammonia, wet bedding, and animal injury and suffocation from overcrowding…
Stein said that sheep are so densely packed that they have nowhere to lie down during journeys from Australia that can take as long as three weeks. Stein said that transport ships were often dirty, old, and poorly maintained, asking rhetorically, “How are these ships authorized to carry livestock in the first place?” Fans are frequently insufficient or do not work at all and automatic water troughs get blocked with so much dirt that they stop functioning. Stein’s evidence follows numerous similar testimonies about the cruel conditions on board these ships and on arrival.
Earlier this month, 34 calves died onboard and 30 died on land after a livestock ship, the Maysora, operated by Perth-based Livestock Shipping Services, arrived from Australia at the southern port of Eilat with 20,000 sheep and calves on board, and it took workers five days to offload, leaving the animals in suffocatingly hot and crowded conditions… In video evidence from the scene workers were seen removing the animals from the ship with electric shock prodders.
The issue of live animal shipments gained additional attention earlier this month, when two cow carcasses washed up on the Tel Aviv shoreline in separate incidents, horrifying bathers. The carcasses were likely from animals thrown overboard on a live transport. In 2018, 685,000 calves and lambs were shipped to Israel for the meat industry, up 37 percent from the 500,000 imported live in 2017′. SOURCE…
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