Over 500,000 calves, lambs have arrived in notorious live shipments so far this year

While meat industry insists ships meet regulations, activists say treatment of animals imported for fattening and slaughter violates animal welfare laws

Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

A live shipment of animals bound for fattening and slaughter in Israel arrives at the port of Eilat on the Red Sea coast on June 19, 2023. (Omri Omessi)
A live shipment of animals bound for fattening and slaughter in Israel arrives at the port of Eilat on the Red Sea coast on June 19, 2023. (Omri Omessi)

Agriculture Ministry figures released Sunday show that during the first half of this year, 502,493 lambs and calves were shipped alive to Israel for fattening and slaughter.

Of these, 69,871 were transferred to the Palestinian Authority.

The figures (Hebrew link) reflect a decrease of about eight percent compared to the corresponding period last year, during which 546,364 lambs and calves were transported to Israel by sea (of which 60,462 were sent on to the Palestinian Authority).

“The shipments continue amid repeated exposures to the appalling travel conditions, disease, environmental pollution and danger to public health,” a statement from the rights organization Animals Now said.

A bill led by Likud MK Miki Zohar to stop the shipments within three years won the government’s support and was approved in a preliminary reading in 2018 without objection. But the legislative process came to a halt because of early elections.

Several bills to stop the shipments have been submitted to the Knesset since then but have not been advanced.

An undated photograph of a calf on a shipment bound for fattening and slaughter in Israel, as it lies in its own feces. (Ministry of Agriculture, for the State Comptroller).

In May 2020, the State Comptroller issued a blistering report that confirmed numerous testimonies about the cruelty of the live shipments.

The report found that vessels were often in poor condition, suffering from insufficient ventilation, high temperatures, and humidity.

Animals were forced to live in their own excrement; wet bedding was not changed often enough; food and water were often lacking; and the air was thick with the smell of ammonia from urine which caused the animals breathing difficulties and sore eyes.

Yet the report said nothing was done to ensure that complaints were followed up, conditions improved, and regulations adhered to.

Furthermore, not enough was being done to monitor, deal with and develop new plans to limit the spread of diseases that could jump from livestock to infect humans.

Earlier this year, at a Knesset State Audit Committee review of that report, chairman Mickey Levy said he was “shocked” by the findings.

The committee called on the Agriculture Ministry’s director-general to meet with the representatives of the State Comptroller and to report where the failures had been corrected and where they had not.

“We must reduce animal shipments in general and the Health Ministry should consider recommending chilled meat and encouraging other activities to reduce live imports,” Levi said.

A live shipment of animals bound for fattening and slaughter in Israel arrives at the port of Eilat on the Red Sea coast on June 19, 2023. (Omri Omessi)

Hatem Dabah of the Dabah company, which, along with Tnuva (under the Adom Adom label) controls most of Israel’s livestock imports, told the meeting that his company’s ships met all of regulatory demands.

But Lior Harish from the Bar Association said that the “tens of thousands of cases of animal suffering” aboard live shipment vessels violated animal welfare legislation and amounted to criminal offenses.

Most Popular
read more: