Vox: All Posts by Sophie Kevanyhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2023-05-27T07:30:00-04:00https://www.vox.com/authors/sophie-kevany/rss2023-05-27T07:30:00-04:002023-05-27T07:30:00-04:00UN numbers say meat is bad for the climate. The reality is worse.
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<img alt="A few dozen densely packed cows in a holding pen look at the camera." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oNEadStKnbOlQR-2YRdjwJ9a4gA=/318x0:1758x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72317987/GettyImages_1322560887__1_.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>The Harris Cattle Ranch feedlot, the biggest beef producer in California, confining nearly 100,000 cows. | George Rose/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>As America gets ready to grill on Memorial Day, a reminder of meat’s role in climate change.</p> <p id="A0EpDO">In 2006, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a bombshell <a href="https://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm">report</a>, called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” that focused public consciousness onto animal agriculture’s role in <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate" data-source="encore">climate change</a>. It turned out it wasn’t just cars, planes, and coal plants that belched planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — it was also something as seemingly natural as the food we eat. The FAO estimated then that the production of meat, dairy, and eggs made up 18 percent of greenhouse emissions globally, a figure so high that, for many people in countries with high levels of meat consumption, dietary change came to be seen as perhaps <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/04/rules-eating-fight-climate-change/618515/">the single most important step</a> individuals could take to reduce their climate impact.</p>
<p id="pxSUEx">Since then, the FAO estimates have gone through a few more iterations. Last October, it <a href="https://foodandagricultureorganization.shinyapps.io/GLEAMV3_Public/">released</a> its most recent estimate of animal agriculture’s carbon footprint, using data from 2015 (each estimate uses data from several years prior). It put livestock’s share of total annual greenhouse gas emissions at about 11 percent — down from its previous estimate of <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.fao.org_3_i3437e_i3437e.pdf&d=DwMFAw&c=7MSjEE-cVgLCRHxk1P5PWg&r=ct6dauPa_NTjdRjj1u6cIc96YmXo5720qGQ3u69psLE&m=_oofmHf3kenIwhdQvaoR4NnfSY6u8tOEdzoPD_SJQ9IHvKpvi87YHRpxJZVa5L5f&s=F0GuvPGfTAViQQX2M07RBvzDTsX6k1-XhdaGRLa2x4A&e=">14.5 percent</a> released in 2013, which itself was down from the 2006 estimate of 18 percent. In raw numbers, too, the new estimate is lower, with animal agriculture accounting for 6.19 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions compared to 7.1 billion tons the FAO reported in <a href="https://www.fao.org/policy-support/tools-and-publications/resources-details/en/c/1235389/">2013</a>.</p>
<p id="cPQvY2">This is a particularly surprising finding, given the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/animals-slaughtered-for-meat">rapidly growing</a> number of animals raised for food globally. About 83 billion land animals were slaughtered for food in 2021 (chickens are the vast majority), up from about 68 billion a decade ago and 55 billion in 2006, according to FAO data. In the US, this Memorial Day weekend will kick off a summer grilling season when Americans alone <a href="https://wallethub.com/blog/memorial-day-facts/21363">are projected</a> to consume some 7 billion hot dogs, or roughly 818 per second. </p>
<p id="wLbmg2">Compared to many peer-reviewed studies, which put livestock emissions at between 14.5 percent and 19.6 percent of the world’s total, the FAO’s new estimate (which is not peer-reviewed) is the lowest to date, according to <a href="https://www.datawrapper.de/_/VMdRe/">an analysis</a> by the Breakthrough Institute.</p>
<p id="6WGqgB">That raises an obvious question: why is it lower? There’s considerable uncertainty on the answer among scientists. Peer-reviewed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/meat-dairy-rice-high-methane-food-production-bust-climate-target-study#:~:text=2%20months%20old-,Meat%2C%20dairy%20and%20rice%20production%20will%20bust,C%20climate%20target%2C%20shows%20study&text=Emissions%20from%20the%20food%20system,high%2Dmethane%20foods%20are%20tackled.">research</a> continues to warn that emissions from agriculture, most of which are driven by animal agriculture, could push global temperature rise past the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5°C.</p>
<p id="5e3xOZ">“It is hard to say why the new FAO number is lower based on their documentation,” said Joseph Poore, a specialist in food sustainability analytics at Oxford University and co-author of an influential 2018 <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216">study</a> on livestock emissions. Other scientists interviewed for this story agreed. </p>
<p id="MsyvCI">So far, the new estimate has only been published as a web app, with a more thorough report analyzing and contextualizing the findings due to be published in the fall, the FAO told Vox. Poore hopes the FAO report will provide a clearer accounting of the methodological changes that led to the 11 percent figure. </p>
<p id="xrR3QT">Despite the lack of transparency, Poore and others suggested several factors that may have lowered the new estimate, including changes in the Global Warming Potential metric, or <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials">GWP 100</a>. That’s a key figure in climate science which is used to convert the warming effects of different greenhouse gases to “<a href="https://www.myclimate.org/information/faq/faq-detail/what-are-co2-equivalents/">carbon dioxide equivalents</a>,” so they can be easily be compared to one another. Methane is now considered 27 times as potent as carbon dioxide, down from a previous <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2020/649400/EPRS_BRI(2020)649400_EN.pdf">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate</a> of 34 times, while nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas closely associated with animal agriculture, is considered 273 times as potent, down from a previous 298 times.</p>
<p id="No7lrS">A deeper concern about the FAO’s estimate voiced by some scientists is what it doesn’t<em> </em>include. It counts only emissions that the livestock industry is directly responsible for — like methane emitted by cows — but it doesn’t factor in the significant climate benefits we’d get if we freed up some of the land now dedicated to livestock farming and allowed forests to return, unlocking their potential as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/7/4/20681331/climate-change-solutions-trees-deforestation-reforestation">“carbon sinks”</a> that absorb and sequester greenhouse gases from the air. </p>
<p id="kQfnPW">Scientists call this the opportunity cost of animal agriculture’s land use. Because animal farming takes up so much land — nearly <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture#:~:text=If%20we%20combine%20pastures%20used,77%25%20of%20global%20farming%20land.">40 percent</a> of the planet’s habitable land area — that opportunity cost is massive, which means looking at figures like the FAO’s alone inevitably provides a limited picture of livestock’s full climate impact.</p>
<h3 id="JZe57a">Models aren’t actually measurements</h3>
<p id="ySkqDF">The FAO’s latest numbers were produced by the third version of its Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model, or GLEAM, a tool it’s been <a href="https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/gleam/docs/GLEAM_3.0_Model_description.pdf">refining</a> since 2009. The decreased estimate doesn’t actually mean that the world is successfully mitigating emissions from animal agriculture — it’s just changing the way it measures them. “The different figures should not be interpreted as a time series,” the dashboard reads. The FAO says it’s “impossible to draw conclusions like ‘emissions went up’ or ‘livestock emissions are becoming less important compared to total anthropogenic emissions.’” </p>
<p id="5e1Zei">Since the revised numbers are still in the ballpark of other livestock emissions estimates, with room for error in either direction, they don’t fundamentally alter the scientific understanding of how much animal agriculture matters to climate change, said Theun Vellinga, a livestock researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and a member of the team who built the first GLEAM dashboard. “The situation is [still] relatively serious, given the animal population continues to rise,” he said, adding that the 6.19 billion-ton estimate was “still quite a worrying figure” and one that needed to be reduced.</p>
<p id="CnjYhX">To untrained eyes, however, the dashboard’s lower figures are easy to misread. Unlike most scientific studies, the GLEAM dashboard provides no margin of error for its estimate, which gives it a false sense of precision, said NYU environmental scientist Matthew Hayek. “Putting a decimal point on this is absurd” because it implies an inappropriate level of certainty, Hayek said, referring to the estimates of 11.19 percent and 6.19 billion tons of CO2 emissions from livestock.</p>
<p id="kJDLDc">“We know there is a 30 percent to 50 percent error” in livestock emissions estimates, Hayek said. “All we can really say is that animal agriculture accounts for 10 percent to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.”</p>
<p id="HhFfop">That’s because the FAO hasn’t actually measured emissions from every livestock farm in the world, which, to be fair, would be an impossible task. It modeled them, and models are imprecise by definition. </p>
<p id="faZdQy">For example, in a 2021 <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac02ef">study</a> aiming to check the accuracy of estimates of cattle emissions, Hayek and a colleague found significant discrepancies between real-world measurements of the air downwind of intensive animal feedlots across America, compared to modeled versions. The measured methane emissions were between 39 percent to 90 percent higher than models like the FAO’s predict, they found. Hayek said this finding suggests models may be underestimating emissions from intensive cattle farms. </p>
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<img alt="A calf inside a small pen looks at the camera." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mnCk6J1UGpayATz5r5kpevez0Lk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24684687/WAM26007.jpg">
<cite>Havva Zorlu/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>A calf at a dairy farm in Turkey. Calves born on dairy farms are separated from their mothers, prevented from nursing, and kept inside individual pens. Cows are a major source of climate-warming emissions, particularly methane.</figcaption>
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<p id="hs1gnM">Accurately measuring livestock emissions is hard. “Biological systems (animals, plants, wetlands) are harder to assess [greenhouse gases] from because you need to model entire biological organisms and systems,” Hayek said in an email. “Modeling fuel use from buildings, transport, or energy is mostly just a matter of thermodynamics, making those relatively less complex.” There are also legal limitations: the US Environmental Protection Agency, for example, has been <a href="https://www.environmentalleader.com/2022/02/letter-asks-congress-to-give-epa-power-to-regulate-livestock-emissions/">blocked</a> from using its funds to measure livestock emissions, and <a href="https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2022/9/thune-ernst-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-government-monitoring-of-livestock-emissions-block-radical-climate-policies">a bill</a> introduced in the Senate last fall aims for an outright ban on monitoring methane emissions. </p>
<p id="r9vkWa">Another well-known uncertainty in livestock climate models is the role of nitrous oxide, among the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210603-nitrous-oxide-the-worlds-forgotten-greenhouse-gas">most potent</a> greenhouse gases, said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. The gas, which comes from fertilizers and other <a href="https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/nitrous-oxide-emissions">agricultural activities</a>, is difficult to <a href="https://www.producer.com/news/nitrous-oxide-soil-emissions-difficult-to-measure/">measure and model</a> because the amount emitted depends on a range of factors including soil temperature, moisture, and microbe levels.</p>
<p id="aWnbfB">All this combined with media’s tendency to simplify data for wider communication, and people’s inclination to see what they want to see about polarizing issues like meat consumption, risks both “the willful and unintentional misinterpretation” of the new estimates, “which is worrying because the world still faces an urgent need to reduce methane emissions from livestock,” said Carlos Gonzalez Fischer, an agri-food systems sustainability researcher at Cornell University. While scientists understand that there’s uncertainty inherent in emission estimates, he said, for the general public and policymakers, clearer communication about what the estimates do and don’t mean is essential. </p>
<p id="82HhBh">That could be accomplished by using a range for the percentage and tonnage estimates instead of single figures. Michael MacLeod, a climate change mitigation researcher at Scotland’s Rural College and another former member of the GLEAM modeling team, suggests displaying the estimate as a confidence interval: “six billion tons plus or minus one billion tons, with a 95 percent confidence of that range,” for example.</p>
<p id="DsquEE">The FAO responded to initial queries about how the model works but didn’t respond to a detailed list of questions about and criticisms of its model.</p>
<h3 id="W6bHqH">The massive opportunity cost of livestock’s land use</h3>
<p id="o93gGl">Some researchers criticize the FAO’s model for excluding one of the most important ways animal agriculture exacerbates climate change: the immense <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0757-z">amount of land</a> it requires. “Livestock use 75 percent of the world’s agricultural land,” which includes both the land that farm animals live on and the land devoted to growing crops to feed them, Searchinger said. “Forty percent of the world’s pasture was originally forest. We have lost a huge amount of carbon storage on that land.”</p>
<p id="MQaoLD">The FAO’s model continues “to ignore the massive land use of animal agriculture, and the major <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nature.com_articles_s41893-2D020-2D00603-2D4&d=DwMFAw&c=7MSjEE-cVgLCRHxk1P5PWg&r=ct6dauPa_NTjdRjj1u6cIc96YmXo5720qGQ3u69psLE&m=_oofmHf3kenIwhdQvaoR4NnfSY6u8tOEdzoPD_SJQ9IHvKpvi87YHRpxJZVa5L5f&s=jaSc05vNlDJjt1MhxXuijWwS5jrVbN662c342KRggNI&e=">carbon opportunity</a> costs of that land,” Hayek said. Its estimate does account for new deforestation events — for example, when wild land is cleared to make way for cattle pasture or to grow animal feed crops like soy — but it doesn’t factor in carbon storage opportunities on land that’s already been deforested for animal agriculture. </p>
<p id="S9tbrF">Freeing up some of that land would allow “large-scale reforestation and native ecosystem restoration,” Hayek said, pulling “multiple years’ worth of our carbon dioxide emissions out of the air and into trees, shrubs, and soils, improving the terrestrial carbon sink, and buying critical additional time that we need to reduce other emissions like <a href="https://www.vox.com/fossil-fuels" data-source="encore">fossil fuels</a>.” </p>
<p id="DDIzFd">One influential study, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22905381/meat-dairy-eggs-climate-change-emissions-rewilding">writes Vox’s Kenny Torrella</a>, found that ending meat and dairy production could cancel out emissions from all other industries combined over the next 30 to 50 years. Such a shift wouldn’t mean producing less food to feed the world — it would mean prioritizing more sustainable, plant-based foods that <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore?country=Pig+Meat~Beef+%28beef+herd%29~Eggs~Lamb+%26+Mutton~Grains~Milk~Other+Pulses~Poultry+Meat~Tofu+%28soybeans%29~Peas~Nuts~Groundnuts~Fish+%28farmed%29~Cheese~Beef+%28dairy+herd%29~Prawns+%28farmed%29~Tofu">require fewer resources</a> to produce the same number of calories. </p>
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<img alt="A birds-eye view of a large cattle feedlot with thousands of cows dispersed between several holding pens." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sBRPsCNP94EyC-8mrv9VMYgOuoA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24684658/GettyImages_57354969.jpg">
<cite>Getty Images/Glowimages RF</cite>
<figcaption>One of the biggest cattle feedlots in the world, in Colorado, housing 120,000 cows. Animal agriculture uses nearly 40 percent of the planet’s habitable land, which could otherwise be used by wild, carbon-sequestering ecosystems.</figcaption>
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<p id="MYGn78">Despite consistent findings by a range of scientists on the benefits of reducing intensive livestock production, there are few signs of any significant moves to do so in global climate policy. Some climate and <a href="https://www.vox.com/animal-welfare" data-source="encore">animal welfare</a> advocacy groups fear the livestock industry won’t let a good percentage go to waste, especially one that suggests, at least on the surface, that fewer emissions are coming from more animals. </p>
<p id="SKXcm5">“I think the livestock sector will say [the new FAO estimates mean] it’s not as bad as everyone thought,” said Peter Stevenson, policy adviser for Compassion in World Farming and author of a <a href="https://www.ciwf.org/resources/reports-position-papers-briefings/factory-farming-who-benefits-how-a-ruinous-system-is-kept-afloat/">new report</a> on the environmental harms of livestock intensification. The US beef industry has already been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-industry-public-relations-messaging-machine">fighting</a> hard against the growing recognition that keeping the climate within planetary limits will require substantial reductions in beef production. </p>
<p id="h0SGDb">“There are billions at stake here for those producing the feed, cages, crates, pharmaceuticals, and fast-growing, high-yielding animals that make industrial production possible,” Stevenson said. “The feed industry is the most valuable … worth over <a href="https://ifif.org/global-feed/industry/">$400 billion</a> a year,” he added, referring to the cultivation of crops that feed farm animals. “They have one consumer — intensively raised animals — and of course they want to protect that business.”</p>
<p id="3AfRaT">Policymakers now face the gargantuan task of not just convincing the meat and dairy industries to accept limits to their business models, but also of persuading a public that’s grown accustomed to cheap animal products to change its consumption habits. Clear science communication from agencies like the FAO, although not enough on its own, will be essential to realizing that goal.</p>
<p id="kv4Ct5"><em>Sophie Kevany is a freelance journalist covering intensive animal agriculture and its impacts on animal, human, and planetary health and welfare. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, Vox, Sentient Media, the BBC World Service, the Irish Times, and other publications. She previously worked for </em><em>Dow Jones</em><em> and Agence France-Presse (AFP), and she holds a master’s degree in journalism from Dublin City University. </em></p>
<p id="5MxFcm"><em>The reporting of this story was partially</em><em><strong> </strong></em><em>supported by </em><a href="https://brightergreen.org/about/"><em>Brighter Green</em></a><em>’s Animals and Biodiversity Reporting Fund.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23738600/un-fao-meat-dairy-livestock-emissions-methane-climate-changeSophie Kevany2023-01-16T07:00:00-05:002023-01-16T07:00:00-05:00The biggest animal welfare crisis you’ve never heard of
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Hgg0j46tQ-QG4WM6gd6tThI0INs=/429x0:3900x2603/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71870629/WAM9943a.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Sheep in Australia are loaded for transport with an electric prod. | Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals Media</figcaption>
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<p>Farm animals starve and drown while shipped overseas for slaughter. Europe is considering a ban on the trade.</p> <p id="7fvCKI">In 2019, a shocking accident at sea drew the world’s attention to one of the meat industry’s cruelest practices: the transport of live farm animals on long, perilous, and often fatal journeys by ship. </p>
<p id="sLsMBF">Late that year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/rescue-mission-for-14000-sheep-on-sinking-ship-abandoned-black-sea">the Queen Hind</a>,<strong> </strong>an export ship carrying more than 14,000 sheep from Romania for slaughter in <a href="https://www.palaureg.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/QUEEN-HIND-MARINE-SAFETY-INVESTIGATION-REPORT-PALAU-FLAG-STATE.pdf">Saudi Arabia</a>, capsized, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/world/europe/sheep-rescue-ship-romania.html">resulting in the drowning</a> of nearly every animal. Disturbing images emerged of the corpses of sheep floating in the Black Sea. </p>
<p id="8vBzQl">That sinking was one of the deadliest for animals in recent history, but it wasn’t unique. High-profile reports of animals drowned or abused on ships have prompted a growing movement in Europe and other regions to end the live export of farm animals for slaughter. While the global live animal trade isn’t a focus for the farm animal welfare movement in North America, where exports are relatively less common and tend to occur by <a href="https://awionline.org/awi-quarterly/fall-2018/usda-begins-enforcement-new-animal-export-rule">land rather than sea</a>, in Europe, it’s excoriated for its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/13/eus-live-export-trade-puts-welfare-of-millions-of-animals-at-risk-report">cruelty</a> and has emerged as one of the most visible — and potentially winnable — fights for animal advocates. </p>
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<img alt="Floating dead sheep are seen in the sea alongside a sideways partially capsized ship. " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/aPA_qfhoz-MQ_Kh91JhsCzabut0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356383/85755_20191125_sinking_Queen_Hind_Midia_RO_7.jpg">
<cite>Animals International</cite>
<figcaption>Drowned sheep after the capsizing of the Queen Hind off the Romanian port of Midia in the Black Sea.</figcaption>
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<p id="YRn0Xf">Countries including <a href="https://chronicle.lu/category/agriculture-viticulture/39727-luxembourg-prohibits-exports-of-live-animals-for-slaughter-to-third-countries">Luxembourg</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/29/new-zealand-bans-live-animal-exports-from-april-2023">New Zealand</a> recently banned the trade, and even Romania, a top sheep exporter, has been considering an end to the trade after the Queen Hind tragedy. In October, Germany <a href="https://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/148-tiertransporte.html#:~:text=Das%20Bundesministerium%20f%C3%BCr%20Ern%C3%A4hrung%20und,vom%201.%20Juli%202023%20zur%C3%BCckgezogen.">became</a> the biggest economy to announce it would end live export to countries outside the European Union, and called for an EU-wide ban on the practice. That came as a surprising policy reversal, given the importance of the livestock trade to the country. The EU is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/eu-revealed-to-be-worlds-biggest-live-animal-exporter">world’s biggest</a> livestock exporter, and Germany is one of the top players in that bloc, selling almost <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2021-01/2020_01_27_efa_transport_white_paper_0.pdf">315 million</a> cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry birds to other EU countries and almost 9 million animals outside the EU in 2019. <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2021-01/2020_01_27_efa_transport_white_paper_0.pdf"></a></p>
<p id="OC3T8a">But the <a href="https://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/2022/148-tiertransporte.html#:~:text=Das%20Bundesministerium%20f%C3%BCr%20Ern%C3%A4hrung%20und,vom%201.%20Juli%202023%20zur%C3%BCckgezogen.">German government</a>, according to its recent announcement, could “no longer stand by and watch as animals on long transports suffer or die in agony.” </p>
<h3 id="c6GP3k">Live animal export, explained</h3>
<p id="VQFUtu">Almost 2 billion of the world’s <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#number-of-animals-slaughtered">80 billion</a> or so land animals raised for food every year, the majority of them chickens, are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/20/two-billion-and-rising-the-global-trade-in-live-animals-in-eight-charts">exported alive</a> to different countries, according to 2021 data from the United Nations. This can happen for a host of reasons: In an interconnected global economy, farm animals are traded just like other commodities, and different countries have become hyper-specialized in different parts of the livestock supply chain. Some nations produce a surplus of animals — either deliberately or as a by-product of their livestock industries — which are exported to other buyers. </p>
<p id="wQrglx">Male calves born into Ireland’s booming dairy industry, for example, have no value in dairy production because they can’t make milk, so they’re sold to the Netherlands or Spain for fattening and then either slaughtered for veal or exported again for slaughter elsewhere. Other countries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/eu-revealed-to-be-worlds-biggest-live-animal-exporter">specialize</a> in breeding and exporting certain baby animals: Denmark, for example, is a leader in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/high-risk-of-injuries-in-denmarks-live-piglet-export-trade-audit-warns">piglet exports</a>.</p>
<p id="zSruFb">And then there’s the demand side. Countries that can’t efficiently raise their own livestock because of limitations like low water supplies or warfare, like <a href="https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/water-politics-in-libya-a-crisis-of-management-not-scarcity/">Libya</a>, can find it cheaper to import animals, particularly when those animals come at a good price thanks to farm subsidies in their countries of origin. This also reduces the need for importing countries to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/30/this-one-has-heat-stress-the-shocking-reality-of-live-animal-exports">refrigerate fresh meat</a>.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A bar chart of numbers of animals exported by the top 10 biggest exporting countries. The highest is Germany its 315 million animals exported to other EU nations and 8.9 million exported to non-EU nations, and lowest is Slovakia, with 36.3 million exported to EU nations and 981.7 thousand exported outside the EU." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/soSdhfWV5wlAGFrrDh9mFijy4Mw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24357753/qSoGV_the_european_union_exports_hundreds_of_millions_of_animals_for_slaughter_abroad_2.png">
</figure>
<p id="WWrog2">But animals aren’t inanimate widgets on a spreadsheet, and when they’re hauled hundreds of miles by land and sea, they’re treated as cargo, not passengers, which means their welfare is the least of anyone’s concerns.</p>
<p id="eyL2lj">And animal transport is inherently stressful. Trucks and ships are miserable places for animals to be crowded into, and painful tools like <a href="https://mpi.govt.nz/dmsdocument/911/direct">electric prods</a>, boards, and sticks are used to force them on board. In the US, too, being trucked to slaughter is among the <a href="https://animaloutlook.org/investigations/animal-transport-torture/">worst parts</a> of a farm animal’s life. American truck transport conditions are so dire that, according to a recent analysis by the Guardian, more than <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/15/more-than-20-million-farm-animals-die-on-way-to-abattoir-in-us-every-year">20 million animals die</a> every year before they reach a slaughterhouse because of factors including physical trauma, slipping and falling in their own waste, lack of food and water, and extreme heat or cold.</p>
<p id="HORkVU">As bad as being transported by land can be, sea transport is even worse, increasing the length of time animals spend in transit to weeks or even months. </p>
<p id="W0sSYv">“Livestock vessels are terrible places for animals,” said Caroline Rowley, founder of Ethical Farming Ireland, a nonprofit that has long campaigned against Ireland’s export of cows, calves, and other livestock. Most ships used to transport farm animals are past their prime, and there’s the added risk of stormy weather and sinking — something livestock vessels like the Queen Hind are estimated to do at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/28/exclusive-livestock-ships-twice-as-likely-to-be-lost-as-cargo-vessels?ref=hvper.com">twice the rate</a> of standard freight ships. Delays at sea, which strain limited feed supplies and increase the buildup of excrement, stress, and injury, are another common risk. </p>
<h3 id="q1aL5z">Livestock ships are an animal welfare disaster</h3>
<p id="84kfCK">Although much of what happens at sea goes unnoticed by the public, a run of recent tragedies pushed livestock shipping into international headlines. After the Queen Hind accident in 2019, a company tasked with bringing the ship back to shore discovered <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/03/secret-decks-found-on-ship-that-capsized-killing-thousands-of-sheep">secret, unauthorized decks</a> on the vessel, raising concerns that it might have been carrying an unsafe number of animals. The Romanian government, which has helped the country become the EU’s top sheep trader, didn’t address allegations about secret decks but told me in a 2021 statement that the ship was carrying an appropriate number of animals. </p>
<p id="fHr2TJ">In 2020, <a href="https://lloydslist.maritimeintelligence.informa.com/LL1141260/Animal-harm-What-to-do-about-livestock-carriers">41 people</a> and nearly 6,000 cows died after the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/typhoon-maysak-ship-with-43-crew-and-nearly-6000-cattle-missing-off-japan">Gulf Livestock 1</a>, a cargo ship traveling from New Zealand to China, capsized. In an <a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/gulf-livestock-1-loved-ones-of-missing-stockman-william-mainprize-share-tributes-two-years-on/news-story/3fe8dc8ad5787683da4bbae0a0edaa9b">interview</a> last year, the girlfriend of one of the missing crew members said he had spoken of low food supplies on the ship. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-11/why-did-gulf-livestock-1-sail-into-typhoon-maysak/101739560">An investigation</a> by Australia’s ABC cited concerns about the Gulf Livestock 1’s safety, and <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/sitecollectiondocuments/biosecurity/export/live-animals/livestock/compliance-and-investigations/report-144.pdf">photos</a> from an <a href="https://www.agriculture.gov.au/biosecurity-trade/export/controlled-goods/live-animals/livestock/regulatory-framework/independent-observer-reports#_2019">independent observer’s report</a> produced for the Australian government revealed animals on the same ship in 2019 thoroughly covered in feces. The disaster galvanized protests against shipping animals, leading to New Zealand’s recent ban on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/29/new-zealand-bans-live-animal-exports-from-april-2023">live exports</a> by sea. </p>
<p id="4heLVy">Last year, another botched livestock shipment horrified the public in France: 780 bulls that had been sailing to Algeria had to be <a href="https://splash247.com/nearly-800-animals-die-in-bureaucratic-spat-between-france-and-algeria/">sent back</a> due to a disagreement over their health paperwork — after which they were killed and disposed of. Similarly failed journeys were reported in 2021, when two ships from Spain bound for Turkey, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/31/how-nearly-3000-cattle-came-to-be-stranded-at-sea-for-three-months">Elbeik and the Karim Allah</a>, together carrying about 3,000 young bulls, were forced to return home after being stranded at sea for three months. The animals were killed on arrival without entering the food supply. </p>
<p id="0jNjAo">A veterinary report on conditions inside the Karim Allah detailed a range of welfare failures, including dead bulls being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/01/cattle-stranded-on-ship-to-be-destroyed-in-port-as-second-vessel-returns-to-spain">chopped up</a> and thrown overboard, and animals with joint inflammation, skin conditions, eye ulcerations, abscesses, and broken horns. On the Elbeik, feces buildup was severe, and many bulls were found dead, starving, or dehydrated.</p>
<p id="HGwW8r">Even when a livestock ship arrives at its destination without incident, what happens next is just as controversial. In the EU, slaughter regulations typically require that animals be stunned to render them unconscious before killing to reduce pain and distress, but in North Africa and the Middle East, this is often <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7154608/">avoided or limited</a> in accordance with kosher and halal slaughter rules. Ritual slaughter laws are a highly contentious issue both in European politics and in the animal movement, contributing to debates about religious liberty, pluralism, and animal welfare. And in many countries, halal rules are evolving: In Turkey, for example, more halal butchers are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/31/animal-stunning-slowly-being-accepted-by-turkeys-halal-butchers-say-activists">embracing stunning</a> before slaughter. </p>
<p id="GBGvMu">Activists often use videos of slaughter abroad to draw attention to what they see as the horrors of live export. Just ahead of Germany’s announcement that it would end exports, the minister of food and agriculture, Cem Özdemir, received <a href="https://vimeo.com/763325727">undercover footage</a> from the organization Animals International that appeared to show workers in two Lebanese slaughterhouses using ropes to bring cows down onto an already bloody floor. The cattle, identified as German by their ear tags, slip on the floor, have fingers pushed into their eye sockets and, once down, have one leg hoisted upward to immobilize them before their throats are cut. (These apparent abuses aren’t tied to halal slaughter; rather, they reflect cruelty that’s common anywhere in the world where animals are slaughtered.)</p>
<p id="4IhCMQ">The German agricultural ministry, responding to my questions about the video for a previous story, did not reference it directly but said it was “unbearable” to see “pictures of dead and injured animals during animal transport and of other animal welfare violations in third [non-EU] countries.” </p>
<h3 id="mcEKmN">More nations are banning live export — but that may not be enough</h3>
<p id="KyS1Sn">Ending live exports is popular with the public: A recent <a href="https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-10/aw_eval_revision_swd_2022-329_en.pdf">report</a> on EU animal protection laws <a href="https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/files/eurogroupforanimals/2022-03/090166e5ea55b805%20%281%29.pdf">found that 94 percent</a> of citizens surveyed supported ending animal shipments to non-EU countries. </p>
<p id="u6BFBv">The animal trade poses serious human health concerns, too, that might make EU nations inclined toward a ban: Long animal transport times are known to increase the risk of antibiotic resistance, a recent EU report <a href="https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2022.7586">noted</a> — a problem that the continent has been making a <a href="https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/report/sales-veterinary-antimicrobial-agents-31-european-countries-2021-trends-2010-2021-twelfth-esvac_en.pdf">concerted effort</a> to address. “Every time you transport animals, you create opportunities for disease spread,” said Ann Linder, a research fellow at Harvard Law School studying zoonotic disease. “Stress lowers immunity, and poor ventilation in trucks also helps spread … there is a real risk of pathogens lingering on surfaces, so you are potentially bringing healthy animals into a contaminated environment, and then locking them in there.” </p>
<p id="LpDGKR">So far, the route to a ban has been different for each country. In New Zealand, the loss of human life on the Gulf Livestock 1 was a defining moment. In Germany, activists have had a sympathetic ear in agriculture minister Özdemir, a vegetarian who, as Vox has <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23273338/germany-less-meat-plant-based-vegan-vegetarian-flexitarian">reported</a>, has championed efforts to make Germany more plant-based. </p>
<p id="wUUwk4">Unsurprisingly, European livestock producers vehemently oppose a ban on live animal exports and have argued the trade <a href="https://www.ifa.ie/farm-sectors/live-export-trade-vital-for-our-e3bn-livestock-sector/">boosts livestock prices</a> by creating more demand for their products. And even for European countries that have prohibited live export to non-EU states, there’s a catch: re-export. Because EU member countries can’t ban exports to each other, nations that restrict animal exports out of the EU can simply sell animals to countries without one. Under Germany’s ban, for example, the sale of cattle to Spain will continue unimpeded. From Spain, where no ban exists, animals are fattened and shipped to non-EU countries for slaughter. </p>
<p id="VBLuPi">Spain is one of the EU’s key <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/12/how-a-spanish-tourist-spot-became-a-global-hub-for-live-animal-export">fattening and re-export</a> hubs. Although the Spanish agriculture ministry did not respond to questions for this story, <a href="https://www.mapa.gob.es/es/ganaderia/temas/comercio-exterior-ganadero/informecexgan-septiembre2022_tcm30-636129.pdf">recent government data</a> shows the country exports hundreds of thousands of animals annually to the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. A 2022 EU <a href="https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/960c2212-d7e6-11ec-a95f-01aa75ed71a1/language-en">report</a> put the annual value of Spain’s beef exports at about $1.2 billion, of which 35 percent is live animals. </p>
<p id="sj9Zp7">To keep the beef trade flowing, Spain buys calves from all over Europe, making it the region’s biggest importer. The country imported 292,000 calves per year between 2015 and 2020, according to the same EU report. One of Spain’s key sources is <a href="https://www.bordbia.ie/farmers-growers/prices-markets/cattle-trade-prices/live-cattle-exports/">Ireland</a>, whose dairy industry was worth <a href="https://www.bordbia.ie/industry/irish-sector-profiles/dairy-sector-profile/">$5.5 billion</a> in 2021. </p>
<p id="5QO9JO">To produce that much milk, the Irish dairy sector impregnates its almost <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/agribusiness-and-food/census-confirms-record-numbers-of-cattle-on-irish-dairy-farms-1.4751491">1.6 million</a> dairy cows every year. Since half their offspring are male and unable to produce milk, they’re eventually slaughtered for meat. Some of the calves remain in Ireland and are reared for beef, but tens of thousands are exported for meat or veal production in other EU countries. </p>
<p id="xXvdHC">Ireland’s island geography means that process involves a journey of at least 18 hours, inside trucks parked on ferries bound for the nearest EU mainland ports in France. From there, the calves are typically trucked to the Netherlands or Spain. Trucks don’t have milk for the calves, so they make the 18-hour ferry journey, plus a few hours for collection and waiting time on either side, without food. A 2020 video, taken by the European animal welfare groups <a href="https://www.l214.com/">L214</a> and <a href="https://www.eyesonanimals.com/">Eyes on Animals</a>, showed weeks-old calves arriving in France, apparently desperate to nurse, being <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/02/secret-footage-shows-calves-from-ireland-beaten-and-kicked-in-france">beaten and kicked</a> to get them off of feeders provided at rest-stops. </p>
<p id="P3nXo5">In response to questions from Eyes on Animals, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, <a href="https://www.eyesonanimals.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Time-Water-Feed-Roll-On-Roll-Off.pdf">suggested</a> that <a href="https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/hungry-stressed-reveal-plight-thousands-27366370">failure to feed calves</a> on such long journeys violated EU regulations. But Ireland has continued to ship calves overseas without food, exporting over <a href="https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/almost-222000-cattle-exported-to-date-this-year/">220,000</a> of them last year. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A calf that appears to be dead or dying lies on the ground outdoors" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/q0CAoRmNSaQkwsSF6L_MVY_KQqc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356398/1920.jpg">
<cite>Eyes on Animals/L214</cite>
<figcaption>An investigation by European animal welfare groups Eyes on Animals and L214 uncovered mistreatment of calves traveling through a French port.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="K4SxHq">Rowley of Ethical Farming Ireland (EFI) said her group regularly sends evidence of problems with live export to the Irish government, “but the department repeatedly ignores us, or sends platitudes in return.” </p>
<p id="qyLkLP">EFI and three other NGOs sent <a href="https://www.animalsinternational.org/media/irish_live_export/">an open letter</a> to Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine in November, asking for a face-to-face discussion about the possibility of Ireland following Germany’s lead in banning exports outside the EU. “While the Germans are restricting live exports, our government is expanding them, actively seeking new markets,” Rowley said. “It’s totally the wrong direction.”</p>
<p id="47rF4V">In an email to Vox, the Irish government said that its “work in this area is conducted on the basis that no one shall transport animals, or cause animals to be transported, in a way likely to cause injury or undue suffering.”</p>
<p id="W7OMYi">The UK in 2020 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/uk-to-become-first-country-in-europe-to-ban-live-animal-exports">promised</a> to end live exports and is expected to soon enact a ban, which might motivate the Irish government to do the same, Rowley said. But an EU-wide ban was equally or potentially more important, she added.</p>
<h3 id="K4ESQF">An EU-wide ban might soon be within reach</h3>
<p id="mSydkR">While individual country bans are helpful, only an EU-wide ban can close the re-export loophole and prevent long shipments and slaughter without stunning, said Gabriel Paun of Animals International. </p>
<p id="lkQf7T">“The ethical, economical, and social benefits for the EU to ban live export are clear,” Paun said. Those advantages, he said, include not just mitigating unnecessary suffering, but also the economic benefits of killing and processing animals in Europe instead of sending them to other countries to do the slaughtering. The biggest hurdle, he added, is the myth that Middle Eastern countries with halal regulations would rather import live animals than accept meat slaughtered elsewhere. The reality, based on Paun’s experience in those nations, is that packaged halal meat is already being imported and that people don’t want to import “dirty, wounded [EU] animals.” </p>
<p id="HVSBkp">Similarly, in Israel, where animals are slaughtered according to kosher laws, the public is alarmed by the treatment of imported animals, and multiple bills have been introduced in the Israeli parliament to ban the trade, according to Hila Keren of Animals Now, an Israeli NGO. “A <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5304573,00.html">survey</a> conducted in Israel showed that 86 percent of the public support the legislation and 91 percent believe live export involves cruelty to animals,” said Keren. “The price of imported chilled and frozen beef is generally cheaper than the meat of cows slaughtered in Israel,” she added.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cow looks out from the side of a livestock ship, appearing to be gazing at her surroundings." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KCpS8MGbnERKbbq6tF9ZC3wf3ak=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24356401/WAM7965.jpg">
<cite>Jo-Anne McArthur / Israel Against Live Shipments / We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>A ship carrying between 20,000 and 30,000 sheep and cows from Australia arrives in Israel after almost three weeks at sea.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ZWXENT">An opening for a European live export ban is not far off, with <a href="https://food.ec.europa.eu/animals/animal-welfare/evaluations-and-impact-assessment/revision-animal-welfare-legislation_en">an overhaul</a> of the EU’s animal welfare and transport laws scheduled for late this year. Countries expected to support ending live exports include Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, given that all five recently <a href="https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-11061-2022-INIT/en/pdf">called for</a> greater restrictions on animal shipments outside the EU. Luxembourg, which banned live animal exports <a href="https://chronicle.lu/category/agriculture-viticulture/39727-luxembourg-prohibits-exports-of-live-animals-for-slaughter-to-third-countries">last March</a>, is another supporter.</p>
<p id="VFqWlA">But opposition is significant. Nations with ports that move large numbers of animals, including Spain, France, Ireland, and Romania, are likely to object to a ban, said Anja Hazekamp, a Dutch European Parliament member and vice chair of a recent <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/anit/about">animal transport inquiry</a>. </p>
<p id="g02Bqr">The Spanish agriculture ministry did not respond to questions about export bans. The French government said it “remains opposed to a ban on the export of live animals to third countries for fattening/slaughter,” adding that it would “pay attention” to the upcoming EU revision of animal protection laws. </p>
<p id="xcZfdK">Ireland’s government didn’t answer questions about whether it would support an EU-wide ban but told Vox that it “demands the highest standards of animal welfare during transport” and “facilitates [live export], recognizing its critical importance to the agri-sector.” </p>
<p id="NgMwYU">Despite the intransigence of live-exporting nations, Germany’s move to end direct exports to non-EU countries, along with this year’s EU talks, represents the strongest opportunity yet for a change of direction. The outcome will ultimately depend on negotiations between EU countries and a majority vote; a ban could pass over the objections of live-exporting nations. </p>
<p id="s7zDH2">Arguments for a ban are currently being tested in Romania, a country that exported over 1.8 million sheep outside the EU in 2019. Dragoş Popescu, a progressive senator there, has championed legislation to end live exports by 2025. But he’s faced steep challenges, with his own party deserting him on the issue, which meant he had to introduce the bill by himself in December, he told Vox. </p>
<p id="B840E2">The challenge is to make people aware of live export’s cruelty, he said. “People don’t know about the treatment of the animals. We will need a campaign to raise awareness,” Popescu explained. His campaign will aim to build on the Queen Hind tragedy. “People were shocked by the Queen Hind, by the reality of live export,” he said. </p>
<p id="KXULX8">Hopeful as he is, a recent WhatApp message from Popescu reflected just how difficult the fight might be: “The debate [on the bill’s introduction], as expected, was hard. The sheep owners were very loud,” he wrote, adding a bullhorn emoji. </p>
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23552817/live-animal-export-europe-queen-hindSophie Kevany