Dear friends, supporters and sympathizers,
Last week Eyes on Animals and TSB|AWF published a shocking
report and film
about the routine violations taking place in the export trade of
live animals from Europe to Turkey. In the period 2010-2015
we inspected 352 livestock trucks at the Turkish-Bulgarian border. As
many as 247 of these were in violation of the law. The most frequent
violations we documented were: overcrowding, exceeding the maximum
journey times, transport at high temperatures above the maximum allowed
and not offering sufficient clean drinking water to the animals.
Each
year we reported our findings to the EU Member States, the European
Commission, Turkish Authorities, livestock transport companies and
exporters. We also
made officials complaints about each documented violation. It was all
to no avail: officials were often denying their responsibilities of
passing the blame on to other parties and promises were not fulfilled.
Meanwhile, the situation at the border has hardly improved and the
export of animals continues unabated.
As
a last resort we decided to launch
a major international media campaign to bring the issue to a wide
audience and shame this trade and its players. And with success! Because
of our hard efforts to get media attention together with TSB
| AWF and with the help of CIWF, media in 13 EU countries paid
attention to this story. We were interviewed twice on Bulgarian
television, a 2-page article appeared in the well-read Dutch
daily newspaper Trouw, our letter to the Belgian Minister of Animal Welfare was published by MO* and there
was a big piece in "Süddeutsche Zeitung", the second largest newspaper
in Germany. Also, parliamentary questions were asked by the Dutch Political Party
for the Animals.
Below you will find a list of all the media that published something about the story. Please won´t
you help us to make our campaign an even bigger success? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
and share
our posts and media links with your followers. And please do continue
to support our work by making a donation so that we can continue sending
teams out into the field to document and expose stories like
this.
With best wishes,
Your Eyes on Animals team
