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This is the news we’ve all been waiting for: New Zealand will finally end its export trade.
The country, which currently sends about 3 million live farm animals every year on horrific journeys around the world to be used as a “breeding herd,” will gradually phase out the practice over the next two years.
On March 31, the New Zealand government sent a letter to the Chinese embassy signaling the end of trade, according to news reports.
Tragedy after tragedy
Over the years, PETA has written to the New Zealand government several times urging it to ban the export of live. Just last month we wrote that due to the obstruction of the Suez Canal, at least 20 ships carrying cows and sheep were trapped, which endangered the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals.
We also wrote in September 2020 when the ship Livestock in the Persian Gulf 1 disappeared in the East China Sea after leaving Napier in New Zealand. On board the ship, 41 crew members and about 6,000 head of cattle were killed.
Countless studies have shown the dire conditions in which animals spend weeks traveling at sea, seasick, crowded and exposed to all kinds of weather.
Animals exported as “breeding stock” still suffer and die
Unlike Australia, New Zealand decided to stop exporting live animals for slaughter in 2008. However, just because New Zealand’s animals are not sent directly to slaughterhouses does not mean that they are less susceptible to disease and death on board ships, and if they survive, it certainly does not mean that they will live a happy life elsewhere.
In 2020, New Zealand exported nearly 3 million live farm animals, including 110,000 cows that will spend their short lives in forced insemination on intensive dairy farms in China.
Day-old chickens make up the vast majority of exported animals. They are torn from their mothers and stuffed by the thousands into boxes for transportation abroad.
Animals thrown into rough seas, trampled by their sailors, choked on their own feces, and died of dehydration, hunger and disease aboard these ships, is like New Zealand “only” exports a “breeding herd.” They continue to endure grueling travel – and face unacceptable risks – only to give birth again and again on depressing industrial farms before being killed in ways that would be illegal in New Zealand.
The New Zealand government has taken a historic and compassionate step. With this decision, the Ardern administration banned the sending of millions of animals – and many people – on gruesome travels, fraught with injury, dehydration, hunger, disease and death.
All eyes are now on Australia, which will follow suit. Join us and call on Agriculture Secretary David Littleproud to finally end this heinous and dangerous trade:
TAKE ACTION AUSTRALIA!
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