Jumpers

Within the animal industrial complex, transport is the liminal space between “farm” and slaughterhouse.

It carries the meat market’s throughline of oppression and enforced intense pain and suffering, and it adds novel fear and torture. Stress, distress, being separated from the herd and familiar surroundings – no matter how awful they were – adrenal flight response, the instinct to flee from a threat, but being confined. Sensory overloading of road vibrations, loud noises, all unfamiliar sights, including being outside for the first time in their lives – and exposure to the elements, often in extreme temperatures. The denial of food, water or rest for 28 hours: that’s the law, written 150 years ago and not once enforced.

I sat down to write about transport in order to understand why it affects me so strongly personally. In opening research, I found that just two days ago, the US Government Accountability Office, the GAO, released a report on just this subject.

According to its website, the GAO is “an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress. GAO examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, non-partisan, fact-based information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.”

The request apparently came from Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and House Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), both of whom are animal welfare voices in Congress.

The GAO report is 15 pages and can be found at gao.gov/products/gao-26-108123. In brief, it identified six factors that could help prevent cruelty to animals during transport and made recommendations to amend the Twenty-Eight Hour Law. It found that while hundreds of millions of animals are transported every year, from 2013 through 2025, the USDA referred exactly one potential violation to the DOJ for enforcement.

Do you look away when you pass a “livestock” hauler on the highway? Have you ever made eye contact with a pig, cow, sheep or chicken onboard? It is dreadful, and I believe the witnessing of such trauma is enough to convert people to veganism.

The Animal Save Movement (https://thesavemovement.org) organizes around this quote from Tolstoy: “When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers, and try to help him.” Animal Save’s mission is to end animal exploitation and suffering, and it includes bearing witness at vigils outside slaughterhouses when animals arrive.

The images of activists attempting to offer water, a kind word, an apology on behalf of humans – it kills me.

I have perhaps – perhaps not – an oversized reaction to seeing transport, this most visible hell of the animal industrial complex. It shatters me. Spared as I am not to have any trucks share my daily routes, images online trigger me like nothing else.

I try not to look away. I am trying to write about it.

Jumpers.

That’s a word I can’t get out of my head for all the images and feelings it conveys.

Whether the lock on a door failed and helpless bodies were flung at great speed to smash on asphalt; or, stacked so mountainously upon each other they spilled over the top and fell to the highway; or their cages simply slipped off the back end and bashed into oncoming traffic, got run over, caught fire. Or a sentient being found a loophole, an escape, jumped and found himself alone, wounded and helpless.

In March, Sisu Refuge (https://www.facebook.com/sisurefuge) documented the rescue of Elsa and Olaf, two piglets who fell from a truck while it was moving down Highway 210 in North Carolina. At least five piglets fell that day; three did not survive the oncoming traffic, and Sisu took in the two little ones. From the high-speed impact, Olaf sustained a broken pelvis, and they both had broken legs.

Images of the bloodied babies, less than a week old and maybe 5 pounds. Their tiny size allowed them to slip through the slatted metal openings of the commercial livestock trailer. That’s probably what happened.

Just a week later on the same highway, a latch on the back door of a truck failed. A dozen infants were dropped onto the road. Most died on impact or were hit by oncoming cars. Sisu took in the sole survivor. His name is Turner.

This trauma travels far beyond North Carolina and all US freeways; it is global and sometimes turns fatal on a massive scale.

Barely two weeks ago, a “live export” ship left Somalia carrying about 4,000 sheep and goats bound for the UAE. The ship caught fire and sank. The Oman Coast Guard rescued the crew, but every animal died, either from fire, smoke or drowning.

World Animal Protection (https://www.worldanimalprotection.org) called the catastrophe a “devastating reminder of the inherent cruelty and risks of the live animal trade and said live export should no longer be an option.

From Four Paws (https://www.fourpawsusa.org): "We cannot look away from the immense suffering these animals endured in their final moments. Confined, frightened, and unable to escape, their lives ended in one of the most horrific ways imaginable."

Jumpers, drownings, and the barest of government reforms. The pain is too much and the remedy is not enough. In my opinion, the answer remains the same: abolitionism.

Stop eating animals.

For support surrounding this, reach me at Dear Allie.