ZDF Report: Animal Transports with Fatal Outcomes
"This is no way to treat animals, it makes me want to cry", says Heinrich A., driver of an animal transport loaded with pregnant cows, who was held for 33 days between the Bulgarian and Turkish border. The onward journey to Turkey, the destination, and also the return to the European Union: prohibited — due to an administrative error.
Filmmaker Manfred Karremann succeeded in accompanying the drivers and their animals even into sealed-off areas.
For weeks, the animals stood knee-deep in their own excrement in extremely confined spaces. Feed and water were in short supply. With each day that the drivers and their animals were forced to spend in the sealed customs zone, more mother animals and calves born during the transport died. For the first time, it was possible to document the fate of the people and animals in such a situation.
Not an isolated case, according to animal welfare advocates
The animal welfare advocates on the ground were also powerless. “This keeps happening here,” says Irene Weiersmüller of the animal welfare organisation Animals‘ Angels e.V.: “It is not an isolated case. Once again, it is just a small error in the German documents that proves fatal for both humans and animals here.”
Although the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Foreign Office, the German Embassy in Turkey and the European Union were all involved, the return journey of the transport to the EU via Bulgaria was not permitted. The lives of the animals could not be saved. The responsible veterinary authority of the state of Brandenburg, from which the cows originated, ultimately ordered euthanasia.
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