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6/10/2006 3:39:30 AM
ILPH appeal. Please help horses!!
Please help us with a donation for as much as you can now so we can get the proof we need to achieve our ultimate aim, an end to this brutal trade once and for all.
I received this letter from Jo White, our Head of Campaigns & European Affairs. I thought you should see it. Horses across Europe are suffering terribly. Please help us.
John Smales
John,
Excuse my haste, but I’m writing this on the road.
We’ve been tracking a lorry from Poland in eastern Europe. When we began our journey three days ago, the lorry was crammed full of horses in a desperate state. It was 40°C outside, even hotter inside the lorry. This is the last journey these horses will ever make. They’re on their way to a slaughterhouse in Italy where they will be killed for their meat.
I’m here to get evidence to help convince Brussels to take action. I think our supporters should know what’s happening. I know I can count on you to tell them, John. They’ve already played such a vital part in helping us improve the welfare of tens of thousands of horses transported live each year across Europe for slaughter.
Thanks to them, those with the real power to affect change in the EU are finally listening to us. From 2007 onwards there will be some improvements, including a requirement for transporters to provide individual partitions, together with training and other steps. But it’s not enough. We are calling for shorter journey times, and ultimately, a ban on the long distance transport of live horses for slaughter.
She’s so right. You’ve been brilliant. But we desperately need you to keep supporting us now to make even more headway.
On Day Two of our mission we were at a collection centre in central Poland. We watched the horses we saw being bought for slaughter yesterday being frantically herded onto a waiting vehicle and the rough handling just made it worse. Time is money for the transporters and the horses are treated like any other commodity.
This trade is big business. It’s worth in excess of £50 million a year.
But these animals just aren’t used to being loaded onto vehicles and the space is so limited; they simply panic. They are not individually partitioned, so they’re all fighting for space and crashing into each other. They bang their heads and legs on the metal sides of the lorry and inevitably injuries are common.
I remember thinking how keeping their footing for the next 24 hours was going to be a desperate struggle for them. Many fall – especially the weaker animals, and then they can be trampled, sometimes to death, by the other horses.
It’s terrible to think that as many as 130,000 horses and donkeys make this awful journey across Europe every year. And Poland to Italy represents one of the shortest routes. There are reports of horses travelling from as far as Kazakstan and Mongolia. That’s the brutal reality of this trade.
24 hours is a terribly long time to stay on these lorries without adequate rest, food or water. We’re calling for shorter journey times now!
We’ve now been on the road for eight hours and the horses have had no rest, no food, and no water. You can see through the narrow air vents in the side of the lorry that they are absolutely exhausted. I’m looking at one horse now, its head down, its eyes closed. What agonies it must be enduring.
It’s now getting on for 11 o’clock at night. We’ve travelled from central Poland, through the Czech and Slovak Republics and we’re on the border between Hungary and Slovenia. We got here before the lorry we were tracking. Now we’re waiting for it to arrive. In the meantime, we’re checking on another lorry that’s parked at the feeding and watering station. There are at least 30 horses on this lorry. They’re not unloaded. Instead, the workers here have about 20 minutes to get hay and water onto the lorry. They only have access to one side of the lorry. Small pouches are inserted through the ventilation shafts and filled with water. Some of the horses, b
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