The live export of sheep by sea remains a major welfare concern, with mortality events and chronic suffering documented across multiple voyages.
Sheep transported by sea endure weeks confined in overcrowded pens with inadequate ventilation and in unfamiliar social groups. Inanimate environment stress, feed change, motion sickness, and temperature extremes all compound. Mortality events are dramatic but the chronic welfare harm to surviving animals is less visible. Heat stress events cause mass casualties over hours as animals pack together in high temperatures.