On Aug. 24, 2024, a semi-trailer truck owned by Demaree Trucking, LLC, was hit by another semi on Interstate 57 in eastern Illinois, causing the truck and its cargo of 67 cows to flip over onto the highway shoulder. Twenty of the cows on board were killed, while another 20 got loose, scattering across the highway and nearby fields, according to records from the Illinois State Police and the Tuscola Fire Department.
Several minutes later, one of the stray cows was hit and killed by another truck.
A month later, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the animal rights nonprofit, put up a billboard near the site of the wreck. “I’m ME, not meat,” read PETA’s billboard, decrying the carnage and dangerous conditions animals can face while being transported.
Law enforcement didn’t find the cattle-carrying truck at fault, but according to police records, the truck that hit it drove away before state police arrived at the scene.
The cows killed in the Tuscola incident were just some of the millions of livestock killed in 2024 while being transported.
Last year, around 20.3 million animals died — 19.8 million of the deaths were chickens — on the way to a slaughterhouse, according to Investigate Midwest’s analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture slaughter figures. Beyond accidents, many of the deaths were caused by deadly conditions inside the trailers. USDA records also show more than 800,000 hogs could no longer walk upon arriving at a slaughterhouse.
Federal laws require animals to be unloaded at various times for rest and water, but an Investigate Midwest analysis found that the USDA rarely investigates suspected violators.
Efforts to strengthen the laws have also been unsuccessful.
“Not only do lax federal regulations on farm animal transportation create inhumane and cruel conditions, but these inefficiencies in the law are also causing many animals to succumb to disease and injury during these long journeys, which can be passed on to humans,” said U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Nevada Democrat who introduced a bill last year to increase the enforcement of current animal welfare laws.
The bill was referred to the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry in 2024. No further action has been taken.
Animal welfare advocates blame many of the deaths and injuries on a system of weak laws and poor regulatory oversight, especially compared to other Western countries, including Canada and Australia. In some cases, truckers are exempt from drive-time laws if they are hauling livestock.
“Part of the reason why animals are treated so poorly is because it’s more economical to do it that way,” said Adrienne Craig, a senior policy associate and staff attorney at the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit advocating for improved travel conditions.
The only federal law governing the interstate transportation of livestock is the Twenty-Eight Hour Law, which states animals must be unloaded for at least five hours to be fed, watered and rested if the journey takes more than 28 consecutive hours.
The Twenty-Eight Hour Law was first enacted in 1873 when rail cars were the primary means of transportation for livestock. Few changes have been made to the law since. The USDA determined in 2006 that the law applied to trucks, but only after intense pressure from animal rights organizations.
Between 2006 and 2023, the USDA conducted just 19 investigations into possible violations, according to public records obtained and shared by the Animal Welfare Institute.
Craig said any sort of distance traveled can have varying effects on animals, especially when there is prolonged food and water deprivation, crowding and extreme temperatures.
“The longer the journey, the longer the animals are exposed to stress, which weakens their immune systems,” Craig said.
She added that injury rates peak for cattle when the journey exceeds 12 hours.
“If you have an animal that can’t balance for, you know, 18 hours on a truck and ends up falling, they can be trampled by other animals,” she said.
Just four warnings in recent years over Twenty-Eighty Hour Law violations
While it’s rare for the USDA to investigate suspected violators of the Twenty-Eight Hour Law, it’s even rarer for regulators to take action against a found violator.
Of the 19 Twenty-Eight Hour Law investigations the USDA conducted over the last 17 years, 12 of those cases were found to have violations. However, just four resulted in an official warning; the rest were either referred to another agency or determined that no action could be taken due to the shipping companies being Canadian, according to the USDA records.
Only two USDA agencies investigate violations of the law: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Veterinary Services (APHIS VS) and USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
FSIS inspectors are tasked with alerting veterinary services if they suspect a law violation at a slaughterhouse. They are supposed to watch for dehydrated or exhausted animals and ask the establishment manager if the hauler complied with the law.
Veterinary Services requires seals for international truck shipments to determine if the animals were unloaded during the journey.
Lyndsay Cole, APHIS assistant director of public affairs, declined to answer questions about whether the Twenty-Eight Hour Law is sufficient at protecting animal health.
In an emailed statement, Cole said the USDA investigates alleged violations of the law and then gives the findings to the Department of Justice. The Attorney General can seek penalties for violators if it’s determined that a transporter knowingly and willingly violated the law.
The Department of Justice declined to answer questions concerning how many violations have occurred and what penalties have been issued. Cole said if the DOJ were to issue a penalty, it would notify the USDA — but when asked how many times the USDA has received such a notification, Cole said that information isn’t tracked.
Livestock haulers are exempt from some laws
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sets hours of service (HOS) rules that state the maximum amount of time truck drivers are allowed to be on duty and the number and length of rest periods.
According to the regulations, property-carrying drivers may drive no more than 11 hours after 10 consecutive hours off duty, and may not drive past the 14th consecutive hour after coming on duty.
However, drivers hauling agricultural commodities, including livestock, are exempt from some of the rules. The exemptions include livestock haulers within 150 miles from the source of the livestock, such as a sales barn, and 150 miles from where the livestock is to be delivered. This allows drivers to forgo using an electronic logging device or keep paper logs.
Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, which supports truck crash victims and advocates for truck safety regulations, believes the exemptions increase driver fatigue.
“What we see is, ‘How can we short circuit the system to transport goods as cheaply as possible, and then foist the cost for that on state-level government, on victims of crashes; really anyone but us, so that more people get to buy goods cheaply, and we make more money?’ ” Cahalan said.
Cahalan believes that hours of service exemptions result from industry pressure to keep shipping costs as low as possible.
“One in five (trucks), statistically, should be placed out of service, meaning it’s unsafe to be on the road,” he said, citing national roadside inspection data.
Jon Samson, executive director of the agricultural and food transporters conference at the American Trucking Associations, the largest national trade association for the trucking industry, said he supports the current hours of service exemptions.
“The reason that got put in place is because agriculture revolves around inclement weather,” Samson said. “Say a storm was coming in; sometimes it was necessary to run more hours than the current hours of service regulations allowed to get more products out of the field,” Samson said.
Samson also believes the exemption prevents some animal loss by getting animals to their destination quicker and maximizing production.
“We need to continue to grow as much food as efficiently as we can in order to make sure that everybody continues to be fed,” Samson said.
Animal welfare advocates point to Europe, Canada transportation laws
In their push for stricter transportation laws, many animal welfare advocates point to the European Union, Canada and Australia as examples to follow.
Craig, with the Animal Welfare Institute, said the European Food Safety Authority based its recommended animal transportation standards on scientific studies. The authority recommended a limit of nine hours for animals being sent directly to slaughter, a 21-hour limit for animals not being sent to slaughter, and an eight-hour limit for unweaned calves, lambs, kids, piglets, and foals. If the mode of transport is equipped with a feeding system, the maximum is nine hours.
Craig said decreasing the maximum transport time for vulnerable animals, such as neonates, animals under four weeks old, or weak or sick animals, should be a priority.
“What would be even better, though, is comprehensive legislation that dealt with all aspects of transport, rather than just duration,” she said.
In the European Union, livestock transportation vehicles are required to have ventilation systems and a continuous supply of fresh water. Resting and feeding periods are determined by the animal’s age and species rather than a universal standard, like in the U.S. The EU also has stocking density regulations for animal shipments, which prevent animals from being too tightly packed into a trailer.
Canada has comprehensive humane animal transport regulations that are backed by “science-informed requirements,” according to a 2022 National Institutes of Health article on the country’s regulations. Canada’s regulations include a required contingency plan to reduce avoidable animal suffering and restrictions on overcrowding.
Craig said she wants the U.S. to adopt fitness regulations so that animals can be evaluated for how healthy they are before they’re hauled.
“Beyond the distance that animals have to travel, one of the factors that is important in whether or not they’re going to make it to their destination is what conditions they are in when they’re put on the truck,” Craig said.
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