EU adopts transport limit

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2004:

BRUSSELS–The European Parliament on March 30, 2004 endorsed
a nine-hour limit on how long animals may be trucked en route to
slaughter.
“It is now up to the Agriculture Council,” now headed by
Ireland, “to finalize the regulation,” said the Eurogroup for
Animal Welfare in a prepared statement.
The nine-hour recommendation was introduced in July 2003 with
the backing of Eurogroup, a consortium representing numerous leading
animal welfare organizations.
“Compassion in World Farming welcomes today’s vote,”
commented CIWF president Joyce D’Silva. “However CIWF still has
grave concerns about the exclusion of animals destined for further
fattening from this limit and the lack of provision for these animals
to rest off the vehicle.”
The nine-hour limit was approved three weeks after the
European Parliament on March 9 voted 287-194 to include animal
welfare considerations in proposed improvements to the European Union
food safety standards.

Ahead, CIWF anticipates a struggle over whether the EU
livestock transport rules override a 70-year-old British ban on
exporting live horses to slaughter. Conservative countryside
spokesperson James Gray warned on March 21 that exports of horses to
slaughter might replace the British horse slaughter industry, which
currently kills about 10,000 equines per year, exporting many of the
carcasses to France and Italy.
Controversy over live exports for slaughter continues to
simmer as well in Australia. Facing trial for trying to block a
sheep shipment to the Middle East in November 2003 by putting
shredded pork in their water, activist Ralph Hahnheuser charged on
March 16 that 75 sheep per day died aboard the Cormo Express last
fall after Saudi Arabia rejected the cargo of 57,000 sheep because
some were ill.