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Irish cattle exports breach EU law, Eyes on Animals claims

Irish cattle in County Monaghan, Ireland
The complaint centres on Irish calves’ long export journeys without food
ALAMY

Irish calves often spend a day or more without food when being exported which infringes EU law, an animal welfare organisation has said.

Eyes on Animals, a Dutch NGO, has filed a complaint with the European Commission about Ireland’s department of agriculture, food and the marine.

The complaint, filed on August 26, centres on Irish calves’ long export journeys without food. Exported calves are usually male and from the dairy sector. Cows produce milk only after they give birth. To maximise the milk available to human consumers, calves are usually removed from their mothers a few hours after they are born.

Newborn calves would normally drink from their mother every three to four hours, or be provided with a regular milk replacer.

When exported the calves are loaded on to trucks that are driven on to ships, and the total journey can take anywhere from 25 to 30 hours. It is not possible to feed calves liquid milk replacer while they are in transit. As a result the animals might spend a day or more without food, depending on road traffic, shipping conditions and how far from port they are loaded.

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Nicola Glen, Eyes on Animals’ UK and Ireland spokeswoman, said: “We hope the commission will uphold our complaint and rule that the export of unweaned calves must stop. If Ireland refuses to comply with the law, we hope the commission will take Ireland to the European Court of Justice.”

Female calves are generally used to replace their mothers as milkers. Males, of little use to dairy farmers, are either transferred to the beef sector or exported to veal farms in Spain or the Netherlands.

About 300,000 cattle were exported from Ireland last year, according to the government’s Bovine Statistics Report. Of those, almost 180,000 were less than six weeks old and just over 114,000 were dairy males.

The complaint says the export of “live unweaned calves from Ireland to continental Europe is in breach of EU law because the length of the ferry journey means the requirement to feed them at certain intervals cannot be met. The ferry journey alone is 17-19 hours. Feed for unweaned calves takes the form of milk replacer; this cannot be fed to calves while they are on board a truck and they cannot be unloaded from the truck while it is on a roll-on-roll-off ferry.”

In a statement, the department of agriculture, food and the marine said: “The department has not had any communication from the European Commission in relation to this matter. It will, of course, co-operate fully with the commission in relation to any enquiries made.”

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The commission declined to comment on the specific complaint lodged by Eyes on Animals, but a spokesman said complaints were handled within the “EU law: Better results through better application” process.

In some cases the commission “may decide to launch infringement proceedings against member states as a means of last resort when there is evidence of a member state’s general practice, of a problem of compliance of national legislation with EU law or of a systematic failure to comply with EU law by that member state,” the spokesman said.

The Eyes on Animals’ complaint alleges “systemic failure by the Irish authorities to comply with [EU] Regulation 1/2005 and its predecessor for over 20 years. Animal welfare organisations have made many complaints to the commission about this since 1999.”

Caroline Rowley, a campaigner with Ethical Farming Ireland, said it was “very clear” that Ireland’s department of agriculture, food and the marine was “in breach of EU Regulation 1/2005 and our hope is that the EU Commission will take action to enforce compliance.”

Ms Rowley worked with Eyes on Animals to prepare the complaint. She said her goal was to end unweaned calf export “unless a method of feeding the calves during transit is devised”.

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She said it was “astonishing that the DAFM . . . are continuing to enable this trade despite clear confirmation that what they are doing is illegal”.

Ms Rowley was referring to a letter sent by the European Commission in June to Eyes on Animals confirming that according to Regulation 1/2005 unweaned calves must be fed after a maximum of 18 hours.

Prior to the June letter, the long journeys without food, mostly from Rosslare or Dublin to the French port of Cherbourg, were understood to benefit from legal exemptions for longer sea journeys. The letter said, however, that the sea journey exemption was made “without altering” the rules “regarding watering and feeding intervals”.

At the time Lesley Moffat, Eyes on Animals founder, said the letter meant that “regardless of the exception for longer sea journeys, there is no exception to the feeding rules”. She said that for older animals “you can comply by putting hay inside the truck or through the bars. You can’t do that with liquid milk replacer and unweaned calves can’t eat anything else.”

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