Suckling calves (calves that still need milk) are transported long distances when they are only two weeks old. The young calves are unweaned babies from dairy cows and are snatched from their mothers on the first day after birth.
They are not yet able to feed themselves on water and hay. Despite this, these extremely young animals are sent on cross-border transports lasting 20 hours without being able to provide them with age-appropriate liquid food. The calves suffer immense thirst and hunger. Many of them die on the long journey or in the days after arrival due to the hardships.
Around 200 animals are loaded onto transporters on several floors. Since the animals are in their immunological gap at the age of two weeks, ie they have not yet built up their own antibodies against diseases, they quickly become ill. By mixing many animals of different origins, diseases spread rapidly.
In order to be able to be fed in an age-appropriate manner, the animals need milk or milk substitutes. However, such feeding is not possible on the transporters. The water supply is often not guaranteed either, since the watering devices are designed for adult animals or other animal species such as pigs.
Young animals do not yet know how to use the drinkers. In addition, the drinkers work with an overpressure system, ie the water squirts out when a valve is actuated. The young animals then stop drinking, because at this age, according to their physiology, they can only take in liquid by sucking.
As part of changes to the Animal Welfare Transport Ordinance, a new regulation on the transport of calves was passed in Germany in November 2021. With this regulation, the minimum age of calves was raised from 14 days to 28 days. This regulation must be implemented from January 2023. On this occasion, published a position paper with possible solutions to end the transport of unweaned calves.
In 2018, 1.5 million calves under 80 kg were traded between the 28 EU Member States, according to the Eurostat database. In Germany alone, around 650,000 calves are transported within the EU every year, and around 20,000 of these calves go to countries such as Spain, some of which in turn export them to third countries.
Thousands of calves are transported on long journeys from countries like Lithuania, Poland and Ireland to countries like the Netherlands, Spain or Belgium to be reared for the veal or beef industry.
From countries like Spain, after a few months of fattening, many of them are exported to third countries as slaughter animals, where they are exposed to the most atrocious slaughter conditions, as is shown, for example, in Manfred Karremann’s documentary «animal transports without borders».