The Alberta-to-Hawaii hog shipping route detailed in a report Tuesday by an international coalition of animal welfare groups as “one of the world’s cruelest transport routes” hasn’t seen any Canadian hogs since October last year, one of the groups said Wednesday.
The World Society for the Protection of Animals, a partner in the Handle with Care Coalition, said it has been notified by Hawaii’s state department of agriculture that the last shipment of pigs from Canada was in early October.
The ag department’s records document shipments of hogs along the route in question, from Western Canada by truck through California to Hawaii by boat, from 2004 to September last year, the WSPA said.
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“While it is very good news that Canadian pigs are no longer being shipped to Hawaii, it is unclear whether these shipments have ceased permanently,” the WSPA said in a release.
Also, the group said, “transport times in Canada are still too long and transport regulations still need to be updated. Canadian regulations allow animals to be transported for 36 to 52 hours with no food, water or rest, and that needs to change.”
The groups on Tuesday illustrated their case with undercover video footage of what they claimed to be a 6,000-km , seven- to nine-day trip for about 15,000 animals per year, and called “the worst route in North America.”
“Deprived of food, water and rest for long periods of time, the pigs never leave the containers they are shipped in and for the duration of that trip are forced to lie in their own feces, urine and vomit,” the WSPA had said Tuesday. “Many (of the hogs) die en route, and the surviving animals are sold to unsuspecting Hawaiian consumers as ‘Island Produced Pork.'”
A montage of its video footage on the Handle With Care site features quick clips of hogs in cramped conditions inside a semi-trailer, others flailing in a loading chute, and close-ups of a motionless animal in the dirt, and the “Island Produced” label. The groups said they shot the video in the spring. The Handle With Care campaign also focuses on three other long-haul international shipping routes for other livestock.
The groups said Tuesday they have a letter from federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, stating that proposed new regulations would prevent the export of live animals if transportation conditions don’t comply with Canada’s regulatory requirements over the entire journey.
