Our AWF/ EonA team stays at the Bulgarian side of the border between Kapitan Andreevo/ Bulgaria and Kapikule/ Turkey and observes the arrival times of animals at the border. A French journalist from ARTE is accompanying us. The trade is comparably slow, with approximately 10 animal trucks per day. We inspect a certain number of trucks, who are loaded with heifers from Germany and Austria and bulls for slaughter that come from Lithuania, Hungary and Czech Republic. We are surprised to find the conditions in most of the transports in compliance with the legislation: the animals have enough space to lie down and rest in straw bedding. Most of the drivers have additional equippment to water the animals.
We find two trucks of the company Petrotrans and a truck of the company Pimk with dirty conditions inside and with broken dividers that can cause injuries to the animals.
Still our team on the Turkish side observes long waiting times up to several days, whereas others continue after 5 hours. The cattle with long waiting times at the border will be confined in the vehicles for more than 29 hours until they reach their destination in Turkey. This is in violation of the Regulation EC 1/2005.
