This summer, Eyes on Animals and colleagues from Animal Welfare Foundation observed an animal truck with Dutch piglets on board arriving at a slaughterhouse in Croatia. The animals had been loaded at an assembly centre in Lunteren (NL). During unloading, we saw that at least five piglets had not survived the journey. Their bodies were thrown from the ramp and dragged to a carcass area.
The fact that five piglets died during an approximately18-hour journey strongly indicates that either their condition or the transport conditions were extremely poor.
We have therefore sent a formal complaint with a request for enforcement to the Dutch authorities (NVWA). We want to know whether this transport was lawfully approved for export. The truck travelled during the hottest hours of the day, making it likely that temperatures inside the compartments exceeded 30 °C. In addition, 971 piglets were loaded, an extremely high number for this type of vehicle.
Normally, Eyes on Animals first tries to enter into dialogue with the responsible party when we document violations while working in the field. In this case, however, we immediately submitted a formal enforcement request to the NVWA, as we have had bad experiences with the Lunteren assembly centre in the past. On an earlier occasion, we observed a livestock truck at the Lunteren assembly centre with severely injured sows on board. When we tried to discuss calmly our concern with the owner, he refused to talk to us. Official government inspection reports also show that this assembly centre repeatedly breaches the rules, with serious cases of animal neglect and suffering.
In the same week, we trailed a second truck transporting Dutch piglets to the same slaughterhouse in Croatia. The piglets came from another assembly centre located in North Brabant. In this truck, too, we found serious issues: piglets with large hernias, overcrowded compartments, and no access to water during the journey. But unlike the first truck from Lunteren, this transport had at least been scheduled during the cooler hours of the day, and the drivers were open and cooperative. After an open discussion with us, the owner of the assembly centre immediately took measures to prevent recurrence — in particular by instructing all workers to ensure a more even distribution of the piglets and to always switch on the water systems. We did not file a formal complaint against this company but will continue to monitor its progress. Finally, we urged the Dutch authorities to assess export certification for pig transports more critically, as both of these trucks had been approved by official Dutch inspectors before departure for Croatia.
Read our more detailed report here >>
