Serbian Animals Voice (SAV)

Mark, I so wish I was contacting you with better news…

Despite the extraordinary efforts of our legal team, who worked day and night over the past three days, we were unable to get the exemption granted to ship 50,000 sheep to Kuwait overturned by the Federal court.

I know how you will be feeling at this news. The deepest sense of injustice, of betrayal. The northern summer ban that was introduced to ensure exporter interests were never again put before the welfare of animals, has failed at its first test.

As you know, commitments were made, only to be broken. Laws enacted, only to see exemptions granted to those laws. Sheep who should be spared, will now be shipped into the extreme heat of a Middle East summer.

I’m sure you may be wondering, how did things go so fundamentally wrong? The answer to that question will start a conversation that animals desperately need us to have.

It would be easy to blame the regulator or the government or the exporter — but their actions are based on and influenced by one underlying factor — a legal system that denies animals raised for food the same compassion, moral consideration and legal protection as other animals in human care.

As a result, vulnerable beings who feel fear and pain are decreed property, items to trade, lives to be bought and bartered, warm bodies to be brutalised.

This cannot be allowed to continue. For when profits have the power to impair our compassion — it is not only animals who suffer, our own humanity is violated and diminished.

Throughout history there have been ‘moments in time’; occurrences that are so at odds with our truth, with our humanity, with our potential, that we are forced to look within and ask, ‘how did we come to this place?’ Inevitably, the answers sought and found fuelled needed transformation.

Let us commit to making the decision to grant this exemption and ship these sheep to Kuwait one of these ‘moments in time’. Let it be the catalyst for a conversation that as a society we need to have — as to how deeply and profoundly programmed we are to think about animals raised for food differently — and the consequences animals bear as a result.

These sheep were not considered by authorities for who they are — vulnerable beings whose well-being is dependent on human kindness and consideration. They became numbers on applications and on spread sheets.

In the granting of this exemption, we will never see a more striking example of the legacy of an inherited belief system that deems animals who are eaten as less deserving of our care and protection.

My commitment to these animals and to you today Mark, is to work even harder to create the shift in human thinking needed to bring all animals into our circle of compassion.

While today has been a difficult day, it makes me ever more grateful for your faith and support, for your presence in this world, and for the compassion and kindness that resides in your heart.

We can and will pave that pathway to a kinder world together.

Onwards dear friend.

For the animals,

Lyn White AM
Director of Strategy

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https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/06/15/scottish-government-defends-illegal-live-calf-exports-as-court-battle-looms/

WAV Comment

I (Mark) have personally been involved with live calf exports from the UK for around the past 30 years. You can see more about this at https://serbiananimalsvoice.com/about-us/

Like ALL live animal exports it is a disgusting trade which is operated by people who are even more disgusting. Ten years ago I produced a formal report on the calf trade from the UK to Europe, which you can review via the above link.

Here is the link to just one of the undercover investigations taken at that time; and which formed one part of the investigation report which was presented to the EU. As you can see; clear evidence that the ‘rules’ for ‘protecting’ the calves was being blatantly ignored; information which was presented to the EU, who; as always; did nothing about it.

Link – https://serbiananimalsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/jh-04-03-2010_report-on-non-compliance-with-resting-times-in-relation-to-controlpost-at-f-heauville.pdf

Nothing much has changed ten years later; the EU disregards all the evidence presented to them, whilst drumming on about how good they are for ‘welfare’. Don’t believe it; they are useless and will do whatever they can to delay and postpone making changes that are beneficial to the animals. For the EU the facts are simple; it is financial gain well ahead of animal welfare; despite all the yukspeak that comes from their lips.

In the past I worked a lot with a great friend and CIWF employee – John; who very sadly died a few years ago. Here is a link associated with John – https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2019/04/25/england-another-terrible-loss-john-callaghan/

We battled at Dover to stop the calf exports for so long; wonderful people fighting at the right, compassionate end of the cause; I was glad to know them all and to be able to call them all true friends; and to be united in fighting the disgusting trade of animal abuse. More recently (as you can read in the article); the calf trade changed from Dover just round the coast to Ramsgate. It has been operated there by a Dutchman named ‘Onderwater’; who operates an ex Soviet battle tank carrier called the ‘Joline’ to get the animals across to the port of Calais in France; from where they continue their miserable journey South within Europe.

Here is a picture of the Joline – ex Soviet battle tank carrier now turned into a live animal transport ship !

When we get news about the Scottish court case you will be the first to hear. I want this to be a welfare victory for so many reasons; I cannot even start to describe. I also want the victory for John; who fought for so long against this vile and disgusting business.

By supporting the dairy industry – milk, cheese, cream etc; you are supporting this kind of animal abuse. Young male calves, of no use to the industry as milk machines; ripped from their mothers side at just a few hours old; crammed onto trucks and exported for hours and hours to die in a foreign land. It is a sick business, and the sooner you distance yourself from everything that is involved with t, the better. Baby cows should be with their mums – simple as that.

Regards Mark

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-live-exports-ban-calves-boris-johnson-brexit-a9564981.html

Scottish government defends ‘illegal’ live calf exports as court battle looms

The Scottish government is going to court to defend the practice of sending live baby calves to Europe, even though Boris Johnson has previously backed a ban on live exports after Brexit.

Experts say Scotland’s calf exports are illegal because journeys breach an eight-hour time limit, and they have launched a court battle to try to halt the exports.

It comes as the findings of an investigation suggest paperwork on last year’s shipments submitted to authorities was misleading. Opponents of the trade suspect it was an attempt to evade a potential future ban.

About 5,500 very young male calves discarded by dairy farmers each year are sent abroad, particularly to Spain and even north Africa, where they are fattened and slaughtered as beef or veal.

By law, journeys over eight hours are not permitted for unweaned calves unless, after nine hours of travel, they are given a one-hour break for rest, water and “if necessary”, food.

In practice, the animals – still dependent on their mothers’ milk – are not unloaded after the first nine hours, according to campaign group Compassion in World Farming (CiWF).

Instead they are transported from Scotland to northern France through the port of Ramsgate for up to 23 hours without food – in breach of the law on journey limits, it’s claimed.

CiWF has launched judicial review proceedings against the Scottish government, saying that if it wins, British live calf exports could not continue in their current form, which “could spare thousands of unweaned calves every year from suffering on exhausting journeys”.

But live exports form a large source of income for Scottish farmers, and Holyrood is fighting back, trying to get the case dropped.

The UK government’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is also thought to be planning to defend live exports if the case goes ahead.

The prime minister has previously condemned live exports, having pledged – before the Brexit vote – that leaving the EU would allow the UK to ban the trade, which European law did not permit.

In 2018, Mr Johnson condemned the trade as “barbaric”, writing in The Sun of the “nightmare” journeys animals endure: “They are terrified. They slip and slide in their own excrement as the boats buck in the swell. They travel for more than 100 hours in conditions of such extreme discomfort that campaigners have been protesting for decades.

“The animals know they are going to die – and they are going to die far from home.”

The Scottish parliament has previously debated banning exports of live A spokeswoman said: “It is most unlikely that breeding is the reason for more than 3,400 two- to six-week-old male calves being exported, given the numbers being exported per sailing, the conditions in which they are exported, and the age of the calves in question; these calves are clearly not of breeding age.

“We are worried that the decision to begin classifying these exports for ‘breeding’ may be an attempt to evade any potential future ‘fattening’ or ‘slaughter’ export ban.”

In a reply to CiWF, seen by The Independent, rural economy minister Fergus Ewing wrote: “I can assure you that there was no intention to mislead and that officials will sense-check any future data of this kind.”

He added: “Our knowledge of the trade permitted us to deduce that the likely purpose was fattening.

And the 2019 Conservative election manifesto promised to end “excessively long journeys for slaughter and fattening”.

But CiWF has discovered that official logs on every sailing last year bar one listed the purpose of the export as “breeding” – so the shipments would be exempt from any ban.

A spokeswoman said: “It is most unlikely that breeding is the reason for more than 3,400 two- to six-week-old male calves being exported, given the numbers being exported per sailing, the conditions in which they are exported, and the age of the calves in question; these calves are clearly not of breeding age.

“We are worried that the decision to begin classifying these exports for ‘breeding’ may be an attempt to evade any potential future ‘fattening’ or ‘slaughter’ export ban.”

In a reply to CiWF, seen by The Independent, rural economy minister Fergus Ewing wrote: “I can assure you that there was no intention to mislead and that officials will sense-check any future data of this kind.”

He added: “Our knowledge of the trade permitted us to deduce that the likely purpose was fattening and production, although the possibility remains that certain of the transported calves may have been later used for breeding.”

The Independent has approached the Scottish government for a comment.

A spokesman for Defra said the government would be launching a public consultation in due course on “excessively long journeys for slaughter and fattening” – which it pledged at the election to end.

The government held a call for evidence in 2018 on controlling live exports for slaughter and to improve animal welfare during transport after Brexit, but Defra says the new consultation will be wider in scope.

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With thanks to Stacey at ‘Our Compass’ for sending this over. Mark.

https://our-compass.org/

Source The Doe
By Alan G, Activist / Progressive / Millennial

A scathing look at the animal cruelty inside a slaughterhouse, from an investigator, vegan and activist.

“I can’t save any of them.” That’s what I reminded myself, day after day, as I looked upon the faces of the animals who would soon be slaughtered. “Just do what you came here to do,” I would add, locking my eyes forward to concentrate on the task at hand. There’s no time to stop and be sentimental.

At a slaughterhouse, there’s always work to be done.

During the years I was an undercover investigator, I worked at three slaughterhouses in three different states—on behalf of a national farmed animal protection organization. While working, I used hidden camera equipment to document the painful reality of what animals endure on the last day of their lives.

I often asked myself how I ended up where I was. Like a lot of people in the vegan movement, I would call myself an animal lover. When I was young, I only had a few career goals. After seeing Jurassic Park, I wanted to grow up and study reptiles. Then, after consuming copious comic books, I wanted to be a hero. I combined these goals and eventually earned a master’s degree in ecology, with the goal of doing conservation research to protect wild animals. But, while I was in school, I learned about the suffering of farm animals through a labmate, the first vegan I ever knew in real life.

You probably guessed this already, but after a lengthy process, I became a vegan as well. Why wouldn’t I? Not only is meat production cruel, but it’s also notoriously bad for the environment, in terms of land use and emissions. So, it appealed to me as someone interested in conservation. In fact, I was so entranced with veganism and its benefits that I decided to keep my career options somewhat open. I wanted to either end up in field research or in activism. The non-profit I continue to work for today was the first to respond to my resume, which eventually brought me to those slaughterhouses.

I ended up working at chicken, pig and lamb slaughter facilities before I retired from fieldwork. I saw cruelty everywhere I went: some intentional and some as a result of companies trying to maximize speed (and, therefore, profits).

The Chicken Slaughterhouse: Animal Cruelty Bordering on Torture

My first job undercover was at the poultry plant, working live hang. Our one job was to pull chickens off a conveyor belt and wedge their legs in shackles passing by at eye-level. We were supposed to handle 24 chickens per minute, an impossible timeframe for anything even resembling “humane.” The birds would struggle; they would flap their wings or defecate out of fear, releasing feathers, blood and feces everywhere. The other workers seemed unconcerned with their plight. They would tear feathers off to throw at one another, or press the bodies of chickens against the metal conveyor belt in retaliation against their struggling. Sometimes, the workers at the head of the line would take a few steps back and hurl the birds at the shackles like they were baseballs. Often, the birds would successfully end up in the shackles after these pitches. It was easy to see that the workers had practiced this method.

The Pig Slaughterhouse: Inhumane Methods of Killing

My second position was at a slaughterhouse supplying a household name in pork products. I ended up working two different jobs there, one of which was on the kill floor. Part of the job was herding the animals through chutes and pens until they reached the stunner. Afraid and/or injured, sometimes they wouldn’t want to move—or simply couldn’t. And when the pigs weren’t moving, the workers started to become violent.

We had “rattle paddles” which look like oars with the flat end filled with noise-making beads. Workers would raise these paddles above their heads and bring them down on the heads or bodies of pigs. Several times, I was admonished by others for not doing this. “Hit them! Hit them!” they would yell at me. We also had access to electrical prods, which other workers would use on animals multiple times, sometimes in the face or near the genitals. The sick ones would be pulled by their tails or shoved out of the pens. We were supposed to use a sled to do that, but a supervisor told me they just didn’t have the time.

When the animals got past the chutes, a worker would use an electrical stunner on them. The hogs would go rigid and fall down a slide to a conveyor belt below. There, a worker would cut their throats. If the cut wasn’t done correctly, the animal wouldn’t bleed out enough to kill them before the stunning wore off, so I documented several pigs returning to sensibility and attempting to right themselves while they were hanging upside down, bleeding from the gaping hole in their throats. Workers were supposed to stop the line to re-stun the animal, but in one instance I witnessed, they didn’t bother, leaving the animal to suffer as the shackle took him slowly towards tanks of scalding water. I remember a choice quote from one worker: “If USDA were around, they could shut us down.”

The Lamb Slaughterhouse: Processing Contaminated Meat

My final investigation was at a slaughterhouse for one of the largest lamb producers in the U.S. I spent a few months working in a refrigerated room all day. The supervisor would tell workers to change the “best by” date labels on older products to falsify their freshness. He would help people avoid putting product through the metal detectors to save time, risking contamination of the meat with metal shavings. And when I finally got a position that would help me observe the slaughter process, we discovered that after having their throats cut open, 90 percent of the lambs would move in response to having their tails cut off later on the line, indicating they were potentially still sensible. What we saw was so egregious we decided to file a False Claims Act against the company, which resulted in a historic intervention from the Department of Justice, a settlement and mandated changes to their slaughtering practices.

Slaughterhouse Workers Suffer, Too

Slaughterhouse practices don’t just cause suffering for the animals. Meatpacking plants are notoriously dangerous for workers, with two amputations occurring in the U.S. per week. Most of my jobs were basically assembly line jobs, with workers performing the same action hundreds or thousands of times per day. Injuries are common, especially those caused by the repetitive motions on the line. I remember my hands aching every minute while I was employed in live hang, my knuckles red from holding the bony legs of thousands of chickens.

In another job, I wore a back brace on top of another because I spent all day carrying boxes filled with lamb meat. I cut myself on knives and metal hangers at the pig plant. More than once, I cried in my car before a shift, anticipating the mental and physical anguish I would endure for the next 12 hours. (And, now, during the coronavirus pandemic many Americans are painfully aware of how disease can spread like wildfire inside of these facilities.)

Though all of that is behind me now, it is still the reality for the billions of animals who are slaughtered every year. While I’m retired from undercover work, I’m still very much an activist for animals. As part of my job, I work with footage from other investigators and witness the same cruelty I saw firsthand. But it’s worth it, because I want people to see what I saw, as hard as it can be to watch. Despite the efforts of investigators like myself, there are still so many people who have no idea where their “food” comes from, and what horrible atrocities they’re paying into by buying animal products. My hope is that everyone who is even a little curious about what I went through can take the time to watch some of the footage brought back from these facilities. As someone who was on the inside, I hope the reality of the plight reaches you.

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Vegans are often accused of destroying the rainforest with their soy consumption. But vegan products are mostly made from regional soy, the rainforest soy is mainly found in pet food.

The soybean industry is booming. Global soybean production has more than doubled since 1997.
This is due to the growing demand for feed for the production of meat and dairy products.

This rapid expansion threatens some of the most biodiverse habitats on earth, including the Amazon rainforest, the Cerrado, and the Gran Chaco in South America, which drives the climate crisis and is at the expense of public health.

In 2017, according to a Greenpeace report, 48% of soy was produced worldwide in Brazil and Argentina alone, with 95% genetically modified, resulting in high levels of herbicides and other dangerous chemicals.

After China, the EU is the second-largest soy importer in the world with around 33 million imported soy products, and 87.4% of the soy imported by the EU is used for animal feed.

Soy, which is mainly used as animal feed, has accounted for almost half of the deforestation associated with imports in the past.

An estimated 87% of imported soy is used for animal feed, almost 50% of it for chickens (broilers for meat and egg-laying chickens), followed by pigs (24%), dairy cows (16%) and beef cattle (7%).

The rest (4%) is used for farmed fish and for the production of other meats.

Almost three-quarters of the EU’s agricultural land is used to feed farm animals – not humans.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/06/15/we-need-an-agricultural-revolution/

My comment:  Mass meat production for almost 8 billion people can no longer be sustained; at least not without massive animal suffering, climate crisis, and pandemics.

It is time to leave the Stone Age and stop producing animal suffering and climate destruction.

Instead of moving from pandemic to pandemic and producing multi-resistant germs, we should take advantage of the possibilities of the 21st century: The final exit from industrial livestock farming !!

When will we learn from our mistakes?
We are the only animal species that cannot.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Although there were 3,500 native bee species of bees pollinating the flowers and food crops of North America when European settlers landed on its shores in the 17th century, the colonists were interested only in their Old World honeybees’ wax and honey.

Bees heads are CRUSHED so workers can steal their semen and use it to forcibly impregnate queen bees.

They imported the insects, and by the mid-1800s, both feral and domesticated colonies of honeybees were scattered all over the United States.

As a result of disease, pesticides, and climate changes, the honeybee population has been nearly decimated, but since the demand for the bees’ honey and other products remains high, these tiny animals are raised by industries, much like chickens, pigs, and cows are.

Industrial beekeepers want consumers to believe that honey is just a byproduct of the necessary pollination provided by honeybees, but honeybees are not as good at pollinating as many truly wild bees, such as bumblebees and carpenter and digger bees.

Native bees are active earlier in the spring, both males and females pollinate, and they are not affected by stressors such as colony collapse disorder.

But because most species of native bees hibernate for as many as 11 months out of the year and do not live in large colonies, they do not produce massive amounts of honey, and the little that they do produce is not worth the effort required to steal it from them.

Avoid honey, beeswax, propolis, royal jelly, and other products that come from bees. Vegan lip balms and candles are readily available.

For more…at https://worldanimalsvoice.com/2020/06/15/there-is-nothing-sweet-about-honey/

And I mean…As a food, honey can easily be identified on supermarket shelves.

But many cosmetic companies- that claim to be vegan- use beeswax for their products, which we often overlook or fail to declare.

So be careful when buying cosmetics too.

The same applies to palm oil, which is used massively in food, but also in cosmetic products, and it is therefore very difficult to find some companies that do not use it.

Nowadays you have to train your eyes very well.

My best regards to all, Venus

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Hi Mark,

This is just a quick note as I know that over the past 48 hours your mind, like ours, will have been with the 50,000 Australian sheep who inconceivably are now scheduled to be shipped to Kuwait this week.

Like me, you may ask yourself, ‘How can this be? Surely there is something fundamentally wrong here?’ And yes, you would be right, there is.

We were not going to allow this shipment to proceed without doing everything in our power to prevent it.

Yesterday afternoon, after working day and night, our legal team filed an urgent application in the Federal Court seeking to challenge the Department of Agriculture’s decision to grant the exemption. Our case will be based on the fact that the decisionmaker was obliged to afford Animals Australia an opportunity to be heard in relation to this application. We are seeking an urgent trial on this matter as the window to overturn this decision is so limited.

There is much to play out in coming hours and days. No doubt the Department and exporter will rigorously defend this decision, but be reassured that our brilliant legal team will be in the Federal Court this morning doing all things humanly possible on behalf of these sheep, and us — the community who care so deeply about them.

Mark, know that we are only able to take this swift action to defend these animals because of you. Thank you so much for supporting these critical efforts as always.

I will keep you updated on developments.

For the animals (and especially for each one of these sheep),

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Bullfighting returns to Spain with strict new rules for the sport

There has been no bullfighting since Spain declared its State of Emergency on March 14th and the industry had voiced its “grave concerns” over whether the tradition could survive

https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/bullfighting-returns-spain-strict-new-22173387?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

Bullfighting is back in Spain despite the hopes of animal rights’ campaigners that the coronavirus pandemic would end the tradition.

The Spanish government has published a new decree that allows bullrings to reopen for the first time in three months.

There are conditions, including regions needing to be in either phase two or phase three of the COVID-10 de-escalation period which most of the country is already in.

Those areas in phase two can only fill their bullrings to a third capacity or a maximum of 400 people.

Once in phase three, this increases to 50 per cent or 800 spectators.

These bullrings have to be outdoors and all the seats have to be allocated in advance.

Any equipment used and anything shared must be completely disinfected after use.

There has been no bullfighting since Spain declared its State of Emergency on March 14th and the industry had voiced its “grave concerns” over whether the tradition could survive.

Thousands of bullfights and fiestas were cancelled, as well as bull running festivals, the most famous being the San Fermin in Pamplona which should have been held from July 6th to 14th and would have attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators from all over Spain and beyond.

Animal rights groups said the coronavirus pandemic should have been the death knell for the sport and that it was part of Spanish culture only enjoyed by the minority.

During the pandemic, bullfighting organisations and unions called for extensive aid and compensation for breeders, bullrings and bullfighters, saying losses would amount to more than 700 million euros in ticket and sponsorship revenue.

Despite the government’s decision to give the go-ahead for bullfights to restart, the industry says it is still furious about the lack of financial help and supporters are planning to launch protests at the weekend in various locations.

They claim the government has shown them “utter contempt”. Marches are planned in Seville, Valencia, Albacete and Guadalajara.

The party for the defence of animals, Pacma had hoped there woud be no more bullfights this year because of the coronavirus and that more than 12,000 bulls would have been saved.

AnimaNaturalis also launched a petition calling for “not one euro of help” and received more than 150,000 signatures.

LIVE EXPORT

Today is “Ban Live Exports” International Awareness Day, an opportunity to speak up for the hundreds of thousands of animals who are forced to make long, harrowing journeys to their deaths.

Live animals, including babies and pregnant females, are transported hundreds or even thousands of miles from the UK to the EU and beyond in dangerous conditions and all weather extremes, causing them distress, injury, and disease. They can be in transit for days, often without sufficient food, water, or rest. Many die as a result.

Now that the UK has left the EU and its trade restrictions no longer apply, we have a realistic chance of securing a ban on live exports. Please write to environment secretary George Eustice – and ask all your friends to do the same – to urge him to prevent thousands of animals from suffering and dying on lorries and ships every year.

Take Action:

https://secure.peta.org.uk/page/62085/action/1?utm_source=PETA%20UK::E-Mail&utm_medium=Alert&utm_campaign=0620::veg::PETA%20UK::E-Mail::Live%20Export%20Awareness%20Day::::aa%20em&ea.url.id=4765410&forwarded=true

THE DANGERS OF THE LIVE EXPORT TRADE

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/21/live-animals-are-the-largest-source-of-infection-dangers-of-the-export-trade

‘Live animals are the largest source of infection’: dangers of the export trade

Transporting more livestock will increase transmission of diseases, including some that could also threaten humans

The growth of the live animal export trade will make the spread of diseases more likely, experts have warned.

Almost 30% more pigs, goats, cows and sheep were shipped, flown and driven across the world in 2017 than a decade earlier, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

The figure is set to rise further, partly because it is still often cheaper to move live animals than use refrigerated transport, despite advances in technology.

Consumer demand for fresh meat is also rising as the global population approaches 8 billion, including many who are increasingly adopting diets rich in meat.

But transporting live animals around the world increases the risk of disease transmission, according to veterinarians and epidemiologists who fear the growing industry may have already caused viruses to spread.

Jeroen Dewulf, a veterinarian at Ghent University in Belgium, said the introduction of the African swine fever virus (ASF) into Belgium had almost certainly been caused by human interference: either through imported contaminated animal products or by illegal movements of wild boar.

“There are several drivers of spreading diseases, but live animals are the largest source of infection,” Dewulf said. “The more you are going to move animals, the more you run the risk that diseases will be spread through these animals. There are other routes, the virus can be transmitted in meat products for example, but it’s much more efficient to transmit via live animals.”

David McIver, a senior scientist and epidemiologist at biotech company Metabiota, said the rise in live animal exports was a growing issue for many other diseases, such as avian influenza virus, mad cow disease and Nipah virus, while he warned that ASF could one day feasibly threaten humans in some form.

“The first case of Nipah virus in 1998 came after an outbreak in Malaysia following the expansion of pig farming in pristine rainforest areas,” he said.

“Bats were eating fruit, they dropped it with their saliva on it, it was eaten by pigs, then it gets into humans and there were 105 deaths. Tons of swine had to be culled to get the outbreak under control. If we’re exporting those animals around the world we’re potentially moving unknown pathogens to new places.”

In another well-known case, British live cattle exports, as well as those of beef products, were banned in the 1990s due to the fear of spreading bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.

It is believed that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare, fatal brain disorder, is likely to be caused by people ingesting meat contaminated with mad cow disease.

The authors of a study in journal BioMed warned in 2015: “Animal trade is an effective way of introducing, maintaining and spreading animal diseases, as observed with the spread of different strains of foot and mouth disease in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), for example, into Oman and Canada through the importation of infected cattle.”

McIver added: “Even though ASF doesn’t affect humans now, pigs and people are not so different biologically and immunologically, so it is conceivable that a few small changes in the genetics of the virus can allow that to hop into people and then we’ve got ourselves a serious problem.”

Prof Dirk Pfeiffer, from City University in Hong Kong and the Royal Veterinary College in London, said the risk depends on where you are in the world. “It’s very regulated in high-income countries with fairly effective measures in place protecting their livestock populations from spread of infectious diseases,” he said.

“The real issue is in many of the low- to medium-income countries where there are new opportunities for money to be made, and that includes increased meat demand. Movements of live animals in these parts of the world play a role in spreading animal disease.” In China, for example, live animals are regularly moved around the country in order to supply the ‘wet markets’ where butchers serve up freshly slaughtered meat. These places have long been connected with disease risk – and, indeed, the recent outbreak of coronavirus has been traced back to a wet market in Wuhan.

A system managed by the World Organisation for Animal Health monitors disease outbreaks and provides information based on the reporting of affected countries. While it is praised for its role, it has to rely on prompt and honest reporting from states to be fully effective.

“One of the perverse incentives about the surveillance system is that the harder you research the more likely you’ll find something, and then the country will be a victim of finding something,” Dewulf said.

“In Belgium, for example, with the recent ASF outbreak, we were carefully monitoring, we notified all the responsible agencies, and then we faced all the consequences, such as trade restrictions, etc. In consequence, our animal industry has been hit very hard.”

But despite the growing realisation of the need to control exports more robustly, experts warn that it would be impossible to screen all animals.

“In most cases where we look at the transmission of disease, whether in humans or livestock, we tend to see them move quicker and in more diverse ways than our surveillance systems are able to keep up with,” McIver said.

Nor are these systems designed to screen live animals or meat products entering or leaving countries, he said, before warning of diseases which have not yet been identified.

“Due to the sheer volume of animals that move around, the budgets that are allocated towards it are not always sufficient and in many cases we’re only able to look for things we know about. Animals may be coming or going with pathogens that are potentially really dangerous but we just haven’t dealt with them yet.”

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