Turkey | Border Kapikule | Animal transports

During the last week, two teams of TSB|AWF and Eyes on Animals have inspected 86 livestock trucks at the Turkish border of Kapikule. All of them transported either pregnant heifers or young bulls for further fattening. The animals were coming from Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy and Slovakia. The majority of the trucks had very high loading densities despite it being well-known that Turkey has extremely hot summers and the trucks remain parked for hours in the sun at this border. We recorded temperatures up to 42°C inside the vehicles. The water coming out of the automatic water troughs was often undrinkable, because it was very dirty and hot. The animals were seriously suffering from heat, thirst and the lack of fresh air. One animal died during the long waiting time at the Turkish border, others arrived dead at the control post in Bulgaria. We documented delays at the border of up to five days. By the time the trucks left Kapikule, many had carried the animals already over the EU maximum journey time of 29 hours, and they often still had more than 1000 km left to get them to the final destination in Turkey.