Video distributed by rights group Animals International showed bodies of sheep pressed against openings along the side of the ship and dozens floating in the sea near the ship.
OZ KATERJI: ‘Thousands of sheep were feared dead a day after a vessel carrying almost 15,000 of them overturned off the Romanian coast, leading to renewed calls for a ban on the controversial sea transport of livestock. The Queen Hind, bound for Saudi Arabia with 14,600 sheep aboard, capsized on Sunday for as yet unknown reasons shortly after leaving Midia port on the Black Sea in eastern Romania…
No one has been able to board the vessel and check its hold but photos and video footage distributed by rights group Animals International showed bodies of sheep pressed against openings along the side of the ship and dozens floating in the sea near the ship…
Mihaita Gheba, chief of the local veterinary authority, said the dead sheep would be burned while surviving ones would be returned to the breeder. Romania… is the bloc’s third-largest sheep breeder after Britain and Spain, and a top exporter, primarily to Middle Eastern markets…
Activists have labelled the livestock transport vessels – about 100 of which leave Midia every year – ‘death ships’, saying sheep risk being cooked alive on board during the hot summer months. In July, Vytenis Andriukaitis, the then European commissioner in charge of health and food safety, demanded that Bucharest stop the transport of 70,000 sheep to the Gulf, citing animal welfare’. SOURCE…
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