Live exports resume from Dover & Ireland

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  May/June 2013:

DOVER,  U.K.––Protests failed to stop the May 3,  2013 resumption of live animal exports from Dover.   Currently just one ship,  the MV Jolie,  hauls animals once a week from Dover to Calais,  France.

Live exports from Dover were suspended in May 2011 to accommodate two years of repair and replacement of facilities.  The U.K. live export trade was temporarily relocated to Ramsgate,  a small port used in animal commerce since medieval times.  A much disputed September 2012 incident culminating in Royal SPCA personnel impounding and killing 47 sheep led to a temporary suspension of live exports by the Thanet District Council.

The resumption of live exports from Dover came a little more than two months after the Irish Department of Agriculture reauthorized live exports of cattle to Libya.

“Libya banned imports from the European Union in 1996 because of bovine spongiform encephalopathy,”  now believed to be eradicated,  “but recently lifted the ban,”  explained the Irish Times.  “The first shipment of almost 3,000 Irish cattle went to the Middle East in February.”

The Animal Rights Action Network and Compassion in World Farming protested the live exports on April 24,  2013 outside agriculture minister Simon Coveney’s office.

Said ARAN founder John Carmody,  “The animals have to endure a gruelling 10-day journey to a country where the Department of Foreign Affairs has advised Irish people not to go.  But they are happy enough to send Irish cattle there in all weather extremes.”