| Summary: | Animal welfare during transport has for a long time been a problem around the world. Many animals are transported in stressful environments for slaughter. Even during Roman and Antiquity times wild animals were transported from Africa to the amusement parks in Rome. The aim of our work was to compare how well Sweden and Denmark are performing their inspections of transports of cattle and pigs for slaughter. Today, overloaded transports and poor treatment is not uncommon in Europe and every year 22 million animals are transported between countries. To ensure that animals are transported in a manner that leaves no unnecessary suffering, the EU has established a Council Regulation No 1 / 2005, which applies in all EU member countries. Each country will then supplement this with their own laws and regulations. Probably the best thing for the animals had been to use the so-called mobile slaughterhouses, so that the killing can be done on the farm. But so far the standard of the mobile slaughterhouses are inadequate. If this should work it would mean that the meat will be transported frozen and that the animals do not have to be stressed before slaughter. Sweden and Denmark have two different systems for checking animal transports. In Sweden this is the responsibility of animal welfare inspectors at the county administration, whereas in Denmark the police are the responsible part. The number of inspections differs in the two countries and Denmark makes more inspections per year. A reason why Denmark performs more inspections is because of their geographic location, and many transports are just passing through while in Sweden there are more domestic transports. There is a lot that the two countries can learn from each other. Denmark has a much simpler checklist to follow during an inspection, but in Sweden, for example, they have a better education of animal welfare inspectors, who also judge harder during an inspection. However, it is better that less advanced checks are done than none at all. Sweden today has not as hard sanctions as Denmark; this means that Denmark can provide higher sanctions for infringements. The conclusion is that Sweden has a better education while Denmark has a better statistic result of number of inspections per year.
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