Livestock trade targeted by air and ferry firms

FIVE companies have expressed an interest in exporting livestock to the Continent by ferry or aircraft following P & O's decision to withdraw from the trade.

Two unnamed companies are proposing to fly calves out of Humberside and Bristol airports to France and the Netherlands. Three ferry companies want to ship lambs, sheep, pigs or calves variously from Folkestone and Harwich to Boulogne and Shoreham to Cherbourg. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is considering the proposals.

P & O, which had 60 per cent of the trade, gave up exporting farm animals after a campaign by the RSPCA and Compassion in World Farming, an animal rights group, which fostered public concern about how the animals were transported, kept and slaughtered. The P & 0 ban follows a similar move by Stena Sealink and a partial ban by Brittany Ferries.

Yesterday a MAFF spokesman confirmed that two companies were considering using large Russian-built Antonov transport planes, flying out of Humberside and Bristol, to transport calves to Rennes and Amsterdam. It is understood that a Bulgarian company operating out of Humberside is one carrier involved.

MT Shipping has applied for permission to transport livestock from Harwich to Boulogne on the Mercadian Senator and is awaiting MAAF approval after an inspection of the ship. A Meridian Ferries ship, which would operate out of Folkestone to Boulogne, was also inspected on Wednesday. A third ferry company has applied to operate a vessel from Shoreham to Cherbourg.

Peter Stevenson, political and legal director of Compassion in World Farming, said yesterday: 'Since P & O's ban . . . came into force on 1 October exporters have been scrabbling around trying to find other ways of getting live animals out of this country.'

Last year the trade, which was worth pounds 200m to Britain, involved the export of 2 million lambs and sheep and half a million calves. Eighty per cent of our meat exports are chilled or frozen, 20 per cent livestock. 'I think the public is going to be fairly horrified at the idea of young calves - I mean these animals are often only a week old - being crammed into these huge aircraft,' Mr Stevenson said.

He added that CIWF was also concerned about lower standards of animal care once livestock reaches the continent. Conditions for transporting and slaughtering animals in France are worse and Holland and France both still use the crate method of rearing calves for veal which was banned in Britain four years ago because it was considered too cruel. This involves calves on an all-milk, roughage-free diet spending five months standing in narrow pens in which they cannot turn around.

Last night Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers Union, was meeting William Waldegrave, the Minister of Agriculture, to discuss the issue of live exports. The NFU considers it a legitimate trade but wants to see a stricter code of conduct on the transport of livestock applied throughout the European Union.