Last modified on Wed 27 Jan 2021 04.55 EST
New analysis suggests the EU could be responsible for up to 80% of the global trade in live farm animals, which continues to be linked to animal welfare failings.
Global data provided to the Guardian by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) indicates that 1.8 billion live chickens, pigs, sheep, goats and cattle were moved across a border in 2019. The EU was estimated to be responsible for more than three-quarters of that total.
“A large part of the cross-border movement of live animals takes place in the EU,” said the FAO’s livestock development officer, Anne Mottet.
Bald Jagdquoten für Bären? Rumäniens neuer Umweltminister will keinen Zoo euronews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from euronews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The appointment of Romania’s new environment minister, Barna Tanczos, has angered environmentalists due to past comments he made about the country becoming “the zoo of Europe”.
Campaigners and environmentalists were quick to recall Tanczos comments made in 2015 that Romania home to Europe’s biggest brown bear population should cull more than 4,000 bears.
“We cannot turn Romania into the zoo of Europe,” Tanczos said in a press conference in 2015. He also said that “The bear population is growing, it has already exceeded 10,000 specimens in Romania.”
Romania’s official bear population is 6,000 more than a third of Europe’s overall population but experts say that there are no accurate counts of the country’s bears.
17/12/2020 - An excellent undercover documentary investigating the world of illegal logging and international timber trafficking It’s something of a tragedy that we’re forced to become accomplices to such a serious crime … Just because we want to buy wooden flooring. The plundering of natural resources which is destabilising the planet and posing a long-term threat to its balance (at an ever-increasing rate), all in the name of a profit, is an open secret. But it’s nonetheless necessary to prove these acts are taking place in order to denounce them to maximum effect and to try to bring the practice to an end (given that dogged denial is, unfortunately, common currency). Irrefutable evidence is required in order to turn a blinding spotlight on the perpetrators.