Film exposing immense suffering inherent in EU live animal exports to be shown in European Parliament

A new film produced by a group of NGOs entitled Live Exports: Beyond Borders, Beyond Imagination will be shown in the Parliament at 14.00 on Wednesday 19 February. The event will be hosted by MEPs Anja Hazekamp and Sebastian Everding. The film can be seen here.

Why now? MEPs are beginning their consideration of the Commission’s proposed new Regulation on the protection of animals during transport. The proposed Regulation is disappointing as it will allow the EU’s inhumane live exports trade to continue with only minor improvements in animal welfare safeguards.

The film – produced by a group of animal protection organisations – aims to persuade MEPs to strengthen the proposed Regulation by banning the export of live farm animals to non-EU countries.

What’s the problem? The EU exports around one million cattle and nearly three million sheep a year mainly to the Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye. Key problems include:

• No contingency plans in the event of transport delays and import refusal at borders of third countries. Lengthy delays arise at the EU-Türkiye border if there are problems with the animals’ paperwork or health status. Türkiye will not allow the animals to be unloaded until the problems are addressed, and EU animal health laws do not permit rejected animals to re-enter the EU. The animals can be stuck for days or even weeks on the trucks in sweltering heat and standing or lying in their own faeces and urine. There was a particularly bad disaster in autumn 2024 when 69 heavily pregnant German heifers were stuck on board two trucks at the border for one month. The animals were standing and lying up to their knees in excrement and had to give birth to their calves under these conditions. In the end 13 calves and 8 cows slowly died in the two trucks. The EU has known about these serious dangers for 14 years but has failed to take effective action to address them.
• Prolonged sea journeys, often on substandard vessels. These journeys frequently last 6-10 days and in the worst cases can be 2-3 weeks. Packed into overcrowded pens, animals can suffer from heat stress,  respiratory illness and harmful gases such as ammonia.
• Shortly after arrival or after a period of fattening in the importing third countries, the EU animals will be slaughtered. Breeding animals from the EU also end up in the slaughterhouses sooner or later. The film shows the slaughter of animals from France, Germany, Spain, Czechia and Romania. During slaughter in the Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye even minimum welfare standards are ignored – as the film’s title says, it is beyond imagination. Cattle are roughly beaten with sticks – including on the head and face – to force them to the ground. In Egypt, slaughtermen often sever cattle’s leg tendons with a knife to control the animals – they even jab their knife into the head and eyes of the cattle. Often a chain is tied round one of a bovine’s rear legs. The fully conscious animal is then hoisted up, dangling upside-down from one back leg, ready for slaughter. Throat cutting is often carried out with blunt, short knives leading to the throat being cut with multiple sawing movements. The scenes in the film are not exceptional; they show the systematic neglect of fundamental animal welfare standards in most slaughterhouses in the Middle East, North Africa and Türkiye.

Key message to MEPs and Member States: Even if you strengthen the proposed new Regulation to better address the suffering involved in the long journeys, you cannot do anything to eliminate the suffering inherent in exports of animals to countries where EU animal welfare rules have no validity and to prevent EU animals from being slaughtered in ways that involve extreme pain and suffering. The only solution is to end the cruel live exports trade.

Despite its claim to have some of the world’s highest welfare standards, the EU is falling behind other countries who have banned live exports:

• Australia has banned live sheep exports by sea from May 2028
• The UK has banned live exports for slaughter or fattening
• A Brazilian Judge has ruled that no live animals should be exported from Brazil’s ports in part because slaughter practices in the Middle East would be illegal in Brazil. This ruling is being appealed and so for now Brazil’s trade continues.