The Union government has withdrawn the Livestock Import and Export Bill, 2023, after widespread criticism by animal rights bodies. The draft of the Bill was circulated in the first week of June and stakeholders were given only 10 days for discussion and comments.
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ON June 20, the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO), one of the leading animal protection bodies in India, issued a press release raising concerns over the proposed Livestock and Livestock Products [Importation and Exportation] Bill, 2023 which now stands withdrawn.
According to the FIAPO, the Bill, which allowed the live export of animals from India, gave a “blanket free pass” for the abuse of millions of animals farmed for food and other uses.
The draft Bill was circulated by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying on June 7. The notification invited suggestions and comments from concerned stakeholders, including importers and exporters, within 10 days.
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The proposed Bill received significant backlash from animal lovers and animal rights groups. On Twitter, #SayNoToLiveStockBill2023 has also been trending since June 7.
If implemented, the Bill would have replaced the existing Livestock Importation Act, 1898 (as amended in 2001).
Speaking to The Leaflet, Bharati Ramachandran, chief executive officer (CEO) of the FIAPO, said that they had written a letter to the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, asking for an extension of time to submit the comments, but decided not to submit any comments or suggestions.
She said: “The Bill in itself did not have sufficient content to merit a response. It was an enabler legislation that would allow the government to pass any gazette notification from time to time regarding live animal trade. So our only response is demanding a withdrawal of the Bill”.
As per the notification of withdrawal, it has been acknowledged that the Bill requires wider consultation for understanding the proposed draft, especially since matters related to animal welfare and related issues are at stake.
Long hours of transportation causes extreme suffering and death of animals
The statement The Livestock of Import and Export Bill 2023: A Pandora’s Box of Cruelties Waiting to be Unleashed on Animals released by the FIAPO notes that as per the 2021 figures released by the United Nations, almost two billion of the 80 billion land animals raised for food around the world are exported alive.
These animals are exported in horrific conditions as they spend weeks and months stuffed in trucks and ships— prodded and poked to fit them into narrow enclosures. They are treated like cargo on these transport vehicles and their welfare is not taken into account, the statement notes.
It adds: “Hundreds of animals catch infections and diseases, and are deprived of food and water on these long journeys. They arrive at their destination often dead, or close to death.”
The statement refers to an investigation report by The Guardian, according to which 20 million animals die annually in the United States on their way to slaughterhouses.
This is due to trauma and injuries because of slipping and falling in their own faeces and urine, and lack of adequate food or water. The extreme weather conditions during the transportation are also a factor in animal deaths.
Further, the statement refers to several other well-publicised cases of death of animals during transportation. The most prominent of them, as per the statement, was the capsizing of Queen Hind, an export ship carrying 14,000 sheep from Romania to Saudi Arabia, which resulted in the death by drowning of all the animals on board.
In December 2020, at the peak of the COVID pandemic, nearly 1,800 bulls were exported from Spain to Turkey on a ship called the Elbeik. The journey, which was supposed to take 11 days, took more than three months because of the inability of the ship to offload the animals at any port due to the pandemic.
“The animals starved. Close to 200 bulls died and their bodies were thrown into the sea. The ship returned to Spain where the animals, declared too diseased and sick to sell, were all slaughtered,” the statement avers.
Inclusion of canines and felines opens the doors to new legal and illegal ways of exploitation
The proposed Bill includes under its ambit “all equines, bovines, caprines, ovines, swines, canines, felines, avian, laboratory animals, aquatic animals and any other animal which may be specified by the Central government by notification in the official gazette from time to time, except those prohibited in any other Act.”
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According to the FIAPO, adding species like canines and felines to the list of live animals to be imported and exported will throw open a “slew of legal and illegal avenues” for the torture, trade and death of such animals.
“In a climate where the regulation of dog breeders is proving to be a tough challenge, and where puppy mills are churning out pups as commodities, this Bill leads us into dangerous areas,” the statement avers.
Treatment of animals as commodities
Another concern about the proposed Bill is that it will open doors to treat “by-products” of animal-based industries— such as male calves and male chicks— as products to be sold for slaughter.
The FIAPO’s statement notes: “The stuffing of live animals into containers to be exported, with or without food and water, is no way to treat animals, who are sentient beings capable of feeling, and certainly, of suffering.
“Standing in close proximity to one another, often in their own waste, unable to move in ways that are natural to them, watching their kind fall ill, fall down, and die, the terror of inhumane handling, and awaiting certain death at the end of their journey: what civilised society can condone this treatment of animals!”
Heralding the next pandemic
Live transport of animals, says the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), is “ideally suited for spreading disease”.
The FIAPO notes that the link between COVID and wet markets (slaughtering and selling live animals on site) is well established.
It said: “Year after year, millions of farmed birds and animals are destroyed because of zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted from animals to humans). And yet, we have suspended our belief that extensive farming and transport of animals has anything to do with the spread of zoonotic diseases”.
According to the FIAPO, closed containers housing thousands of animals in close proximity to be shipped by land or sea over days or weeks are perfect laboratory conditions for viruses to spread and mutate.
“India— and indeed the world— has just about got on its feet after two and more years of the pandemic. We cannot unleash fresh horrors by allowing such mass transport of animals,” the FIAPO’s statement remarks.
Moving towards a ban on live trade of animals
The statement notes that many countries are now moving towards a ban on the live export of animals.
In April this year, New Zealand banned the export of livestock by sea under the Animal Welfare Amendment Act, 2022. The Bill was proposed after the tragic sinking of the Gulf Livestock 1 ship near the Japanese coast, which killed close to 6,000 cows and 41 crew members. The live export of animals remained suspended after that incident.
In April this year, a trial court in Brazil ruled to ban the export of live cattle from all the country’s ports. Djalma Gomes, a federal judge in the Brazilian trial court, said in the ruling, “Animals are not things. They are sentient living beings, that is, individuals who feel hunger, thirst, pain, cold, anguish and fear.”
The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill introduced by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in June 2021 proposed to ban live exports for slaughter or fattening from or through Great Britain. The Bill floundered in the Parliament but according to the FIAPO, there are signs that excessively long journeys for the slaughter of animals might end in the near future.
Other countries like Germany also recently tightened conditions for the live export of animals for animal welfare and protection. In 2020, the Netherlands also stopped the live export of animals on welfare grounds.
“Compassion in the treatment of animals is enshrined in the Indian Constitution. Subjecting animals to days and weeks of suffering by shipping them off under torturous conditions to foreign shores to die is not compassion. India must withdraw this Bill and lead the way in banning the import and export of live animals,” the statement concludes.
