Today, together with the French NGO Welfarm, we held a very effective training day for the gendarmes and official veterinarian services in the Hautes- Alpes department. After the 3-hr training course on the European legislation on the protection of animals during transport we went to the National roads and stopped 4 animal trucks carrying sheep and cattle. Two were fined, one for reasons of causing serious animal suffering and needing the emergency euthanasia of an injured and trampled sheep. The transporter had loaded a sheep with a broken leg and placed her with 22 other sheep on 5,63m2- 30% above the EU density limits. Fortunately we were able to quickly organize that the injured sheep be put out of her misery, but it was very disturbing to find out that she had been suffering for already 7.5 hours like this on board.
Thank you to all the participants for their motivation and making this world a bit more humane. We were a great team altogether and the gendarmes and veterinarians are now eager to conduct more inspections of animal trucks on the road. They saw immediately how necessary it is but also what an impact they could have.
