RSPCA and animal welfare supporters flock to seaside town becoming focus for bitter protests over cross-Channel sailings
As the lorries trundled in, the cry went up. "Animal abuser!" shouted one woman. "Evil scum!" shouted another. People jeered and shook their fists. "Unless you come down here and see it for yourself, you can't realise how horrific it is," said Mary Harvey, a teacher. As the lorries drove on towards the ship waiting for them in Ramsgate port, the sea air filled with the smell of farm animals.
Since last May, Ramsgate has been the only port in the UK through which live animals are exported. More than 76,000 – mostly sheep and calves – passed through it last year on their way to continental Europe.
Now, for the first time in a decade, the RSPCA has returned to a UK port to keep a closer eye on a trade it had hoped to have left behind in the last century.
Last Thursday, as three lorries carrying around 500 sheep and 120 calves drove in for transport to Calais, chief inspector Dermot Murphy said the prospect was bitter-sweet. "RSPCA inspectors haven't been at ports for many years," he said. "In some ways it's an honour to be representing the society to do that work, but at the same time, I would like to be the last to be doing it."
When he first visited last month, Murphy, working alongside officials from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, issued two hauliers with warning notices for having broken ventilation fans and carrying sheep in the wrong way. Similar notices were issued by the government agency Animal Health. No such infringements were found last week, although a sheep's hoof was found to be stuck in a ventilation shaft and was released.
Campaigners hope the mere presence of the extra inspectors will have a positive effect on welfare standards in a trade they claim is unnecessary and cruel. In the meantime, they will carry on registering their dissent. Every time there is a sailing, there is also a protest.
"It's on my doorstep and everyone else's doorstep," said Reg Bell, a local businessman. "We don't want it. And we're not going to have it."
Ian Driver, a local councillor who launched an e-petition urging the government to reform animal export laws, added: "A year ago I wouldn't have even thought about animal rights, but the first time I saw it, it was terrible. I'd never seen the likes of it."
In the mid-1990s, when the outcry over the live export trade was at its height, millions of animals were leaving for Europe every year. Then came the lull caused by the BSE crisis. But in 2010, a vessel called the Joline, a former Soviet tank carrier, started taking live animals from Dover and, in May, moved its business to Ramsgate.
The number of animals exported began to rise significantly. Defra figures released to Compassion in World Farming under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that trade reached a peak in October, with the export of 22,301 sheep. Campaigners say that, since the start of this year, the trade appears to have dropped off.
For , this is no cause for celebration. But buoyed by moves in Brussels to impose an eight-hour limit on animal journeys, they are quietly confident the trade will ebb away in coming years. In the meantime, they continue to demand more stringent inspection of the exports and the suitability of the Joline to carry live animals. On a route that would take a commercial ferry around two hours to complete, it takes around four.
The Marine Coastguard Agency has declared the Joline seaworthy. But Alan Poole, deputy leader of Thanet district council, said he had doubts about her fitness to take live animals. "The vessel is open to the elements," he said. "Personally, with 40 years in the Merchant Navy, I wouldn't go to sea on it."
As the owner of Ramsgate port, the council has been placed in a tricky position by the row. Strongly opposed to what Poole calls a "totally unnecessary" trade, it was advised that under the 1847 Harbours Act it had to accept the Joline, but is working with the RSPCA to try to stop the trade.
"Our preferred method would be slaughter near the point of production and get them across in a refrigerated lorry," said Poole. "We feel that's more humane."
Like the National Farmers' Union (NFU), Trevor Head, the driver of one of Thursday'sthe lorries, argues that there is nothing inherently wrong with the trade as long as welfare standards are maintained. He would like to see commercial ferries take the exports again, a step that would shorten the journeys, but which the ferry companies such as P&O have said they will not consider.
As some of the 270 sheep he had on board poked their noses out of holes in the side, Head said: "I don't agree with the very long distances … but there's nothing wrong with this trade if it's done properly." He was setting off for Belgium, a journey which he said would take 11 hours all told. Driving through the protesters, he said, was a "very humiliating" experience that reminded him of the direct action of the 1990s.
He would have received little sympathy from the activists, however, who have erected a banner at the entrance of the port dubbing it the "port of shame".
"Feelings are running high," said Murphy. "And it would be very difficult to predict how people may react if [the live export trade] continues, or indeed increases."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/18/ramsgate-battleground-live-animal-exports
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