In Ireland, a boom in the dairy industry has meant thousands of calves facing a gruelling journey of nearly three days with little rest and in crowded conditions as they are exported to the veal industry in mainland Europe. The veal industry itself is just a name for baby meat.
RTE, the national broadcaster in Ireland, tracked one shipment of calves, typical of the journey thousands of these animals will face. Its program,‘RTE Investigates’, found that breaches of European legislation on the transport of calves was routinely broken and regulations concerning Irish marts were flouted.
Thirteen hours on a ferry crossing, in addition to time already spent on a truck from the holding pens to the ferry, and the animals are “bawling from below deck.”
The presenter, Fran McNulty, writes that “The constant noise they are making is the sound of hunger.”
The calves cannot be fed aboard the ship, there are no feeding facilities apart from water faucets on the trucks.”
With time for boarding disembarkment and travelling to and from the ports, the time the animals are without milk is close to 21 hours. These are calves – baby cow, torn from their mothers and still crying after their mothers. Suffering 21 hours on a journey, hemmed into cattle pens and trucks without food or milk is hugely traumatic for the animals.
In that one sailing alone there were 2,000-3,000 calves. In scenes witnessed at marts in Ireland, some of the calves were near worthless – a product of the system that places little worth on male calves. Cross Jersey Breeds are bred for milk production and consequently, are hard to ‘fatten’ for meat. Over 1.5 million calves are born every year in Ireland alone.
Poland it seems, is the main ‘beneficiary’ of this boom in the Irish dairy market, with a growth of exports in calves to Poland of 300%. This particular shipment of calves headed to Spain where after a brief stint at a holding pen near the port, the calves faced another 9 hour drive to the Spanish border. Nobody checked on the animals in that time and the regulations surrounding break times for the calves was ignored.
The reporters also observed cattle being beaten with sticks (illegal for calves), kicked and slapped. Two incidents of calves being flung from trailers by workers was observed.