Long Distance Transport and Welfare of Farm Animals

WSPA HWC Report 36pp Text:WSPA HWC Report 36pp Text 14/1/08 13:34 Page 5UNNECESSARY125 YEARS OF PROGRESS?of beef are imported in a refrigerated state from America, Australia and NewZealand.”The chief inspector at Smithfield’s Meat Market told Plimsoll that the best beefto eat was that which came over as dead meat, because the beef which isbrought over alive is injured on the journey, reducing the quality of the carcass.Plimsoll’s manifesto also complained that unscrupulous salesmen were passingoff live imports as locally reared animals, and that the cruel live trade only continuedbecause it made money. “There is no cruelty to the cattle, and no risk tothe men, that will stop them if there is money in it,” one seaman told Plimsoll.“Prolonged torture” was Plimsoll’s verdict on the way the animals werejammed tightly together in overcrowded, foul conditions, standing all the timesometimes for the sixteen days on board, mad and furious with terror andunrest. Infectious diseases spread rapidly. Disasters at sea, from fires to shipwreck,were common.The Press, a New York newspaper, remarked that “a sea-sick man is one of themost pitiful things one can see, but his sufferings are nothing to those of theanimals. They will look at one so pleadingly and helplessly that you almost feellike crying for them.” The Press went on to wonder why someone did not thinkto have a law passed.Samuel Plimsoll was first elected an English Member of Parliament for Derbyin 1868, and unsuccessfully petitioned for a Bill in Parliament that absolutelyprohibited the importation of live cattle for food.Mankind has made tremendous advances in the last 125 years, but sadly thecruelty of live animal transport would be just as familiar to Plimsoll today asit was in 1890.BEYOND CRUELTY. BEYOND REASON. LONG DISTANCE TRANSPORT AND WELFARE OF FARM ANIMALS. 5