Animal rights activists fight abuse, electrocution of lambs and calves

TV report shows Australian animals being maltreated at Eilat Port.

By SHARON UDASIN
A WORKER beats calves 370 (photo credit: Courtesy Anonymous for Animal Rights)
A WORKER beats calves 370
(photo credit: Courtesy Anonymous for Animal Rights)
The organization Anonymous for Animal Rights filed complaints with the police, and the Agriculture and Environmental Protection ministries on Wednesday demanding an investigation into the abuse of calves and lambs.
This after a report on the subject that Channel 10 aired on Tuesday night.
Video footage, documented by a researcher for Anonymous, shows workers whipping calves and lamps as they are being unloaded in Eilat from Australian ships on June 15, destined for large Israeli meat companies such as Tnuva and Debach. Later, the researcher documents workers using electric shockers on some of the animals while loading them onto trucks headed to Tnuva’s Adom Adom slaughterhouse in Beit She’an.
Animal rights organizations in Australia filed a similar complaint with local authorities.
“It is absurd to transport animals on an arduous journey tossed on ships from the other end of the world to be fattened and slaughtered in Israel,” said Hagai Cohen, from Anonymous for Animal Rights.
The researcher had installed a camera on a mountain opposite the Port of Eilat, documenting the unloading of the 25,000 animals from ships and onto trucks – a process that lasted about 40 hours in the heat, according to Anonymous.
Revealing serious abuse, the video shows workers beating the animals all over their bodies, including their heads, and throwing the lambs from a great height.
“All of this occurred in plain sight of an Agriculture Ministry inspector,” the Channel 10 report says.
After following the trucks carrying the animals for about 3 km., the Anonymous researcher recorded the unloading process at the quarantine station in Kibbutz Eilot, showing repeated lashings, pulling them by the tails and the use of electric shockers.
Likewise, the researcher took footage of the animals being shocked as they were loaded onto trucks at the fattening farm at Kibbutz Beit Hashita north of Beit She’ean, on their way to Tnuva’s Adom Adom slaughterhouse. The electric shockers are used to push the animals to board the trucks faster, the Anonymous researcher explains on the Channel 10 report.
Questioned on camera about the electric shocking process inside the barn, the manager of the facility yells to the worker to cease the practice.
“Do not use that," he instructs the worker.
This documentation joins a December investigation of the Adom Adom slaughterhouse that arose after the television program Kolbotek on Channel 2 revealed serious abuse and shocking of calves and sheep at the facility. In the video evidence for that case, Adom Adom workers were shown abusing calves with a shocker, as well as beating them and dragging them by their legs onto a forklift.
Both the most recent incident and this one join a 2011 investigation that showed calves being shocked before slaughter for the company at the Zafur quarantine station at Moshav Tzofar in the central Arava, Anonymous for Animal Rights said.
Emphasizing that the abuse of the animals “is only exacerbated after their docking on Israeli shores,” Cohen from Anonymous said the Agriculture Ministry was failing to properly monitor the actions of the country’s meat companies. He called for consumers to “choose not to fund this cruelty” and to actively boycott Israel’s meat industry.
The Agriculture Ministry said it conducts extensive operations in all matters related to animal welfare, noting that the ministry promoted the approval of animal welfare regulations regarding the transportation of livestock and prevention of their suffering during the process. The regulations prohibit the use of strength or electric shockers against the animals except in cases with reasonable cause, and all transport of animals must occur in the presence of a supervisor or driver trained by the ministry, the office continued.
More than 500 drivers and escorts have been trained in Agriculture Ministry courses designed to minimize animal suffering, which has led to significant reductions in transport abuse, the ministry said.
During the unloading of the ship in Eilat in the Channel 10, inspectors from the Agriculture Ministry and a government veterinarian took part in the unloading process, which lasted three days, according to the ministry. As part of the process, the inspectors examined the trucks that would transport the calves and lambs, ensuring that they were clean and enabling the continued transfer the animals without delay, the ministry said.
“The Agriculture Ministry asked the reporter to transfer to the office the photos in his hands,” the ministry said. “They have not been received, and we would like to receive them in order to take action on the subject. Veterinary Services in the Agriculture Ministry calls for all citizens to contact the office with any suspected violation of the Animal Welfare Law.”