Over 7,000 cattle from Germany were transported to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan last year.
The animals often suffer from hunger and thirst.
For a cow, the trip to Uzbekistan is an ordeal. When it is loaded onto the transport truck, there are more than 5000 kilometers of travel in the truck ahead of it, and it stands on unsteady ground for days. As a rule, the cow is pregnant and should set up a new herd at the destination. In summer the heat in the truck quickly rises to 30 degrees or more, in winter the water in the drinking troughs freezes. The cow has to make an effort to keep her balance. If she falls to the ground, she sometimes doesn't have the strength to get up again. It then lies inches high in the excrement.
Animal welfare is often not observed on trips to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and the law is broken again and again. Officials, scientists and animal rights activists confirm this in an interview with Ippen Investigativ. The EU transport regulation stipulates that the cattle must be unloaded after 29 hours at the latest in order to eat, drink and rest on solid ground. State ministries all over Germany have massive doubts that there are enough supply stations on the way to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to properly care for the animals.
Numerous federal states, including Hesse, Saxony and Bavaria, have put Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan on a list of third countries where there are “serious doubts” that German animal welfare standards are being complied with when the animals are transported.
Despite known violations, thousands of cattle are transported to Uzbekistan
Last year, transport companies nevertheless transported more than 7,000 cattle via Hungary to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan via a legal loophole - despite known violations in animal welfare.
This is shown by research by Ippen Investigativ.
Exclusive figures show that in the past year alone more than 3000 animals were transported via Hungary to Kazakhstan and more than 4200 cattle to Uzbekistan. The internal documents from which these data emerge come from a European control authority. The animal rights organization Animal Welfare Foundation received the documents about the Freedom of Information Act. Ippen Investigativ sifted through the documents and data, checked the authenticity and randomly confronted authorities and ministries with the results.
The European Court of Justice ruled in 2015 that authorities must ensure that animal welfare is observed on the transport to the destination country.
The authorities inquired by Ippen Investigativ were not yet aware of the high number of German animal transports to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
"The long journey means enormous stress for the pregnant animals"
The reason for this is a loophole in the EU transport regulation.
If the animals stay in one place for 48 hours, their onward journey counts as a new transport.
The animals are first driven to Hungary, unloaded there for two days and then transported on to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.
German authorities can no longer control animal welfare on the onward journey, officials in Hungary are then responsible.
German authorities do not even find out where the German animals will actually be transported in the end.
"For the pregnant animals, the long journey means enormous stress," says Iris Baumgärtner from the Animal Welfare Foundation.
Over thousands of kilometers, the cattle have to compensate for every braking, every curve, they cannot lie down and whoever is lower in rank often does not even have a drink and is thirsty.
An analysis of the internal data shows: A particularly large number of exported animals originally came from Bavaria; this affects more than 2500 cows, around 85 percent of the animals that were transported to Kazakhstan. Numerous animals were transported to Uzbekistan from Bavaria and Lower Saxony, and quite a few also come from Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg. (Graphic)
The Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection and (STMUV) had pointed out the possible detour of the animals via Hungary months ago. "Transports that are contrary to animal welfare to critical third countries are unacceptable," writes the ministry on request. The Ministry for Social Affairs, Health, Integration and Consumer Protection of the State of Brandenburg writes: You see “a clear need for action to protect animals”. From the Hessian Ministry for the Environment, Climate Protection, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, it is said that they knew about the legal loophole, but: “The extent was not known.” The exporters' approach was strange. It is not surprising, however, if one takes as a basisthat German authorities had been presented with travel plans for years "in which non-existent supply stations were registered".
Two years ago, a delegation of German veterinarians on a trip to Russia discovered that supply stations for cattle on the route to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan sometimes do not even exist. Instead of stables with animals, the vets found deserted meadows, an alleged stable should be in the middle of Moscow in an office complex. "We were extremely affected," says the Hessian animal welfare officer Madeleine Martin. She initiated the trip to get an idea of the location. The reason for this was research by the animal welfare organization Animals Angels. The animal rights activists had accompanied the transport of the cattle in winter when the temperature was below zero. Images of snow-covered animals and frozen potions made the media.
The results of the vets were also sobering: "We had to take note that an industry has obviously lied systematically to the authorities," says Madeleine Martin.
“These animals could not have been transported in accordance with the law because there is no supply station at the back of the route to Samara.
And from there, the way is still very long. ”The animals can then quickly travel for more than 35 hours at a time - or even several days.
Control authorities failed in court
The Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety writes on request that it is assumed that the legal requirements for transports “are regularly not complied with in practice”. The Ministry of Social Affairs in Saxony also has "serious doubts" that EU animal welfare requirements would be complied with on the long transports. The Hessian Ministry of Consumer Protection speaks of "systemic" animal protection violations.
Confronted with this problem, the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) writes that it is advocating an EU-wide transport ban. Federal Minister Julia Klöckner raised the issue of supply stations “in general” at the informal meeting of EU Agriculture Ministers in September last year in Koblenz. Klöckner had "drawn attention to the often unreliable information situation on supply stations in third countries". The state authorities are responsible for the controls.
In recent years, however, they have repeatedly failed in attempts to prevent transports to controversial third countries.
Transport companies went to court and administrative courts decided several times that the dangers feared were too "abstract".
A Bavarian authority, for example, was unable to stop a transport to Hungary at the beginning of the year, although it was known that further transport to Kazakhstan was planned after 30 days.
The Munich Administrative Court ruled that “feared animal welfare violations” would not be enough to stop the transport.
In addition, further transport is no longer the responsibility of the Bavarian authorities.
The Federal Ministry wanted to prevent national prohibition lists for third countries
The Bavarian Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection writes on request that the legal situation is "unsatisfactory". The “remaining loopholes” would have to be closed. In February the Federal Council asked the federal government to ban long-distance transports to distant third countries.
Two reports come to the conclusion that such a ban would be legally possible. The Hessian animal welfare officer Madeleine Martin gave one order. According to the report, transports can be prohibited if there is a “realistic, not remote” possibility that there will be a violation of EU law on the transport route. Another report commissioned by the animal welfare organization Vier Pfoten comes to the conclusion that the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) can ban animal transports to countries such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
When the Federal Council wanted to decide on a transport ban to 17 problematic third countries in the middle of this year, the BMEL contacted the state ministries a few days before the vote.
The legal basis for a national regulation is assessed as "too indefinite", according to the internal letter that Ippen Investigativ has received.
There is no justification for each individual country, the regulation is not "proportionate".
You can block other important regulations if you stick to the national transport ban.
“That should be prevented under all circumstances!” Writes the ministry.
"This is a significant animal welfare problem"
It is unclear what influence the concerns of the Federal Ministry had on the vote in the Federal Council.
One thing is certain: the decision was made against a prohibited list.
"It would have been a strong signal if Germany had officially said that we would forbid it," says MEP Tilly Metz, chair of the so-called ANIT committee, which is reviewing at EU level how the transport regulation can be improved. "If you know that rest areas don't even exist, then it would be a logical consequence for me to say that we cannot actually allow certain animal transports outside the EU," says Metz.
Michael Marahrens, Deputy Head of the Institute for Animal Welfare and Animal Husbandry at the Friedrich Löffler Institute, recently published a study on animal welfare transports on behalf of the committee. He comes to the conclusion that the current legal situation does not effectively protect the animals from injuries, pain and suffering during long journeys in third countries. “Both the transport process and the treatment of the animals in the country of destination are characterized by a lack of transparency,” says Marahrens. Numerous animal welfare problems would also arise on site. The animals are neither adapted to the climate nor to local parasites. “This is a significant animal welfare problem,” says Marahrens. “The animals then often get sick.” The solution is obvious. One must export genetic material and breed new breeds,which are adapted to the new living space.
