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C RA S o the foot-andmouth epidemic is officially over and livestock
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transport is once again a regular feature on the UK's roads. Make raay for some lengthy debates ibout the safety of animal trans)ort and the rafts of regulations hat are sure to follow.
Take the draft resolution idopted on 16 October zoo' and iesigned to improve animal welTare and prevent disease spread.ng rapidly throughout the EU. It :alls for action that will impose ime and distance limits on the :ransport of all livestock for daughter. The European Parliament's Committee on Agrirulture and Rural Development las proposed. among other hings, that such animals should )e carried for no longer than 2ight hours to their final destina
tion and no further than 500km.
To many operators across Europe who have invested heavily in expensive equipment designed to carry livestock over much greater distances for longer periods of time, this is a draft that is just plain daft.
SAVEETRA—the Dutch Cooperative Body of Livestock Carriers—is one of the organisational bodies within the Dutch transport operators association Transport en Logistiek Nederland (TLN). SAVE En:A has sent a strong letter to the European Parliament urging MEN to reject the resolution. It has the support of TLN's 7,000 member companies and associate bodies from several European states.
A SAVEETRA spokesman explains: "Limiting the transport distance will not considerably reduce the risk of the spread of diseases. After all, the contacts between animals, which involve the greatest risk of infection, will remain the same. In other words, it makes no difference if the distance is, let us say, 500, 750 or r,000km. Therefore, if the European Parliament wants to reduce the risks concerning foot and mouth and other diseases, they should focus on strict rules concerning cleaning and disinfection. Not only cleaning and disinfections of the vehicles, but also the staging points."
Animal welfare
SAVE ETRA maintains that failure to reject the proposals "would finish off a sector that has invested a great deal over the past few years, particularly in improving animal welfare".
Farmers and livestock transport operators in the UK have similar fears and question the logic of the resolution. They also dispute the government's undt standing about the spread of fo and mouth disease.
Joe McQuillan, a farmer ar operator from County Antrim Northern Ireland, provides a viE from both camps: "They say t1 UK outbreak started in Longtov market in Cumbria. We had vehicle there that day and N were walking around the mark all day long. If the disease w that easy to spread we would ha had a problem on our ov farm—but we didn't."
After standing vehicles up ai employing his expensive rigs less profitable duties during t: transport ban, McQuillan is undi standably angered by propos that could take away the chance utilise his high-specification vel des to their full advantage.
You are talking abo Li5o,000 a rig and that's befo you pay tax, put them on the ro d employ a driver," he points t. "We welcome anything that's tter welfare for the animals, but He was nothing wrong with the .nsport before the outbreak and eight-hour maximum doesn't ake a great deal of sense.
"By the time you load and are the boat for two or three hours er to Scotland, it doesn't give u a great deal of time to get wn through England. If they going to change the law to ;ht hours, there will be hauliers th the best equipment who will unable to afford to continue ing the job. Instead it will be ne by people without the Dper equipment who are prered to break the law."
The laws governing the transrt of livestock for slaughter are mplex. In addition to EU r ective 91/628 EEC, first introced in November 1991, which pplies the EU's overall legal
framework, there are national laws, which enact the directive.
There are also variations in enforcement between the individual member states. Under the current laws, a carrier using a "basic" livestock vehicle is already limited to an eight-hour maximum journey time from the collection point to final destination (ie, the slaughterhouse).
Eight hours
However, a carrier using a "highspecification" vehicle is governed by different restrictions. On journeys over eight hours the driver must be able to demonstrate, through certification, competence in dealing with the animals. The vehicles themselves must also satisfy additional requirements. Graham Taylor, senior environmental health officer at Birmingham City Council (BCC), explains: "They must have six additional elements and these include the provision of bedding, feed, access to each deck other than through the loading ramp, plus a ventilation system that guarantees a range of temperatures that can be monitored and adjusted) between 5°C and 3o°C.
"It's got to have partitions and be equipped for connection to a water supply during stops. You can provide water on the vehicle, using troughs, bowls or nipples, but pigs have to have access to water the whole time."
Total length
On such a vehicle pigs could be carried for up to 24 hours, while cattle and sheep can continue for a total of 29 as long as they have a mid-journey rest. Theoretically, the total length of the trip from the UK can be as long as is necessary to complete the journey.
However, a veterinary manager for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs must first approve it. Consequently, animals for slaughter may travel from Northern Scotland to Southern Greece within a matter of days, so long as a route plan has been filed.
"This specifies, among other things, what the journey is, what the animals are and so on. It also specifies what arrangements there are in place for resting, feeding and watering purposes. These arrangements have to fit in with the maximum journey times and the documentation must be returned to DEFRA at the end of the journey," says Taylor.
He says that the real aim of the 16 October resolution is to put the emphasis on the slaughter of animals as near to the point of production as possible.
"One of the major problems with this is that there is no abattoir infrastructure in place to ensure that you can limit the journeys," says Roger Wrapson, secretary of the Livestock Group at the RI-IA. "In many cases it [the limits proposed by the resolution] will not cut down the journey times for the animals.
"In the short term it will not achieve much in the way of animal welfare and it will only help in the long term if more slaughter houses are built in the right places."
The RSPCA has long argued for the introduction of an eight. hour maximum journey time for livestock en route to abattoirs; it is right behind the proposals in the EU resolution. RSPCA European campaign manager Justin Wilkes dismisses the notion that the proposed restrictions will effectively put an end to the livestock haulage industry. He says that on the contrary, it will create the local market forces that will stimulate local demand and make the development of such an abattoir infrastructure viable.
The RSPCA expects formal consultation periods to begin inside the individual member states by the middle of this year, with a decision by the year-end. Don Armour, freight policy manager at the ETA, admits that animal welfare is determined more by the conditions experienced during transporl and less by the distance involved; but he warns: "Farmers and operators can't just keep throwing money at new vehicles all the time without seeing sonic return on their investment."