Preventing the Suffering of Millions of Animals Transported Alive from the European Union

In the first days of May 2025, 53,000 lambs were shipped from the port of Cartagena to countries outside the European Union, in one of the most difficult operations to defend from an ethical and legal standpoint in recent history. The Animal Welfare Foundation (AWF) has been documenting inadmissible conditions on this route since 2018, and the figures speak for themselves: Spain annually exports around half a million sheep and live cattle. Before stepping onto the dock, each of those 53,000 lambs experienced a prior truck journey characterized, according to AWF researchers, by extreme overcrowding, lack of ventilation, and absence of regulatory stops for eating, drinking, and resting. Regulation (EC) 1/2005, which establishes maximum driving distances and times along with minimum space and welfare requirements during road transport, is systematically violated. The result is exhausted animals with crushing injuries and internal bruising. Several hundred lambs already show lameness ...