We are joined today by Karen Soeters, director of PiepVandaag and photographer Thomas Schlijper from The Netherlands. They want to make a reportage about the conditions on the ground here that we have been seeing year after year. We are very pleased they want to further expose the problems in the hope that competent authorities and industry will finally take action to clean this trade-route up.
In the morning we noticed that the 2 livestock trucks from yesterday that are traveling together are still waiting at Petline and that there are 5 new livestock trucks already. In the afternoon more trucks arrive. In total we inspected 23 trucks ourselves but many more passed without us having time to look inside. Some fattening calves coming from Slovakia were in a truck with very old dividers, dirty bedding and so overcrowded that there was not enough space for the young bulls to lie down. Many animals have irritated eyes from the ammonia.
We observed in a truck with pregnant heifers how the udder of one of them was leaking which means that the delivery of the calf will come soon. Some cattle do not have enough headroom at all. On another truck, coming from Lithuania we observed also pregnant heifers and one of them is panting, showing signs of heat stress. Again a day with an endless row of suffering animals.
In the evening we were interviewed by PiepVandaag and we sincerely hope this will will create more awareness about these doomed journeys.
