Nearly 4 million chickens, 726,000 pigs, and 29,000 cattle die in transport every year in the U.S. In the EU, about 3.3 million animals die on their way to the slaughterhouse.
MATTHEW ZAMPA: ‘Heat waves aren’t just a people problem. When food, water, shade, and safe transport are scarce, farm animals are often the first ones to suffer… The story of animals dying – starving and thirsty, stuck in barns, trucks, and pastures, exposed to hotter temperatures than ever with no ability to change habitats.. Farm animals are prone to heat stress. When the external temperature clocks too far in one direction, the animals lose the ability to cool themselves. After prolonged exposure, heat stress sets in. They start panting and their hearts begin to race. Without immediate relief from the heat, the symptoms intensify. The animals lose their appetite, become lethargic, and drink water excessively when they have access to it. When they don’t, heat stress can become fatal.
Nearly 4 million broiler chickens, 726,000 pigs, and 29,000 cattle die in transport every year – just in the U.S. In the EU, the number of animals who arrive at slaughterhouses dead, referred to by the industry as “dead on arrival” or DOA, is also significant. Around 1 percent of EU farm animals die on their way to the slaughterhouse, according to a 2011 report, or about 3.3 million animals. The report found lambs to be the most killed animals in transport, representing 94 percent of all EU DOAs…
Under normal circumstances, farm animals are fairly adaptable to external temperature change. But it gets significantly harder for animals to regulate their body temperature under stress. In the back of overcrowded, poorly ventilated transport vehicles, animals struggle to cope with their hostile environments. Overcrowding, loud noises, motion sickness, and dehydration put an extraordinary amount of mental and physical stress on the animals. During the worst of this summer’s heat waves, exhaustion, dehydration, heat stress, cardiac arrest, and sudden death were all too common.
The conditions inside transport trucks are further complicated by industrial farmers, who operate with little to no functional oversight when shipping animals across state and international borders. As a result, downed animals are left to rot in piles of their own feces. Millions more leave transport trucks barely able to walk, staggering as they approach the slaughterhouse door in their final moments of life’. SOURCE…
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