Turkey border

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 … [Read more...] about Day 7: Inspection of livestock trucks at the Turkish border

All day livestock trucks from Europe are entering into Turkey . We observe animals coming from Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. We were able to inspect 24 trucks but many more passed by.   One truck we first saw already on the 26.06 is still there. He finally leaves in the evening (after the animals wait two days straight … [Read more...] about Day 6: Inspection live-stock trucks at the Turkeys border

It is not raining anymore and it is getting really hot. A serious problem at Petline is that, like inside the border, there is only one water hose. Because the empty trucks on their way back to Europe are using water to clean their trucks the water pressure for filling up the water tanks on the trucks loaded with live animals is very low which makes the process of giving … [Read more...] about Day 5: Inspection of livestock trucks at the Turkish border

In the morning our teams went back to inspect the livestock trucks at Petline. The calves on one truck that had been unloaded yesterday were reloaded, while others from the same company were unloaded. Due to the small size of the outdoor pens, there is no other way to do it- not all animals waiting in Kapikule can get out of the trucks, only a very small percentage. The … [Read more...] about Day 4: Inspection of livestock trucks at the Turkish border

Our team counts the EU livestock trucks leaving No Man's Land an entering Turkey. Sometimes we cannot check the animals on board as they do not stop to do their import-customs in Kapikule but continue driving past. They will do their customs import taxes somewhere else in Turkey, at custom offices in Istanbul or Ankara, meaning again long waits for the … [Read more...] about Day 3: Inspection of livestock trucks at the Turkish border

Today our teams were busy all morning at Petline station, inspecting trucks with animals from various countries throughout the EU. On board were pregnant heifers, fattening calves, slaughterbulls. We again find dirty water troughs, extremely thirsty cattle desperate for water, and dead animals. There is not enough space to unload all the animals so most of them are … [Read more...] about Day 2: Inspection of EU livestock trucks at the Turkish border

Today a team of inspectors from Eyes on Animals and AWF|TBS arrived in Instanbul (Turkey) and drove to Kapikule, at the Bulgarian/Turkish border. We are going to inspect livestock trucks bringing in animals from the EU to Turkey. While driving along the highway from Istanbul to Kapikule we observed 22 EU-platted livestock trucks passing us in the other direction, all … [Read more...] about Day 1: Inspection of EU livestock trucks at the Turkey border