منع استخدام السياط والصاعق الكهربائي خلال نقل الحيوانات

The Ministry of Environment, Water, and Agriculture has proposed a comprehensive guide to regulate the transportation of livestock and its products via transportation means; aimed at closing avenues for epidemics, reinforcing animal welfare principles, and applying penalties on violators.

The project achieves an integrated legislative system to ensure complete oversight of the movement of live animals both inside and outside Saudi Arabia, warning transporters against exceeding eight continuous hours in transport routes without granting animals mandatory rest periods and providing water and food.

It emphasized that violators of the requirements will be subject to strict penalties and confirmed the necessity of obtaining an additional license from the ministry for each means of transport that begins to load livestock or its products.

The project prohibits the transportation of sick animals or products suspected of contamination without prior written approval, and it prevents the movement of animals to and from areas under epidemic quarantine that are declared in any geographical location, granting extensive field powers to authorized employees, allowing them to stop passing transport means to ensure their full compliance with animal welfare standards.

The ministry also prohibited the use of painful means such as whips, tail twisting, and eye pressure to prepare animals and urge them to move, and the use of electric shocks in sensitive areas of the animal was banned.

The legislation requires owners of land transport trucks to provide specific engineering spaces for each animal to avoid the risk of overcrowding, with a requirement for effective mechanical or natural ventilation that operates even during stops, and to design vehicle floors in a way that prevents waste from falling onto public roads or onto animals in the lower tiers.

The guide stipulates that the area of each pen inside ships should not exceed 40.5 square meters, with at least one equipped veterinary clinic located in the heart of the ship to deal immediately with any health emergencies during sailing.

Transporting Birds in the Evening

The guide strictly warns against shipping female animals in advanced stages of pregnancy; to spare them the risks and pains of childbirth in isolated environments, and sets a strict time frame that the transport of live birds should not exceed 12 hours at most from the moment they are captured, with bird shipping operations designated for early morning or evening to avoid the impacts of heat stress caused by scorching sunlight.

The proposal requires refrigerated transport vehicles to maintain temperatures ranging between -1 and 10 degrees Celsius for refrigerated operations, and for cooling to reach -18 degrees Celsius for frozen products, coupled with the presence of digital devices to continuously record the temperature.