The Hidden Cruelty on Our Highways: Why Sustainable Transport Advocates Must Oppose Live Animal Transport

Editor’s note: The following story contains images of animal transport that some may find disturbing.

Every day, millions of farm animals are trucked across the U.S. on journeys lasting up to 28 hours without food, water, or rest. Every year, millions of farm animals suffer, and many die from heatstroke or exposure during long-distance transport. 

Just last month in Delaware, 4,000 baby chicks died after being abandoned in a postal truck for three days without food or water. The tragedy made headlines, but it’s a glimpse into a transport system built on the abuse of animals.

This isn’t just an animal advocacy issue. It’s a transportation issue. And it’s one that sustainable transportation advocates can act on. 

Highways Enable Cruelty and Emissions

In 2023, over 20 million chickens, 330,000 pigs, and 166,000 cattle arrived dead or dying at slaughterhouses. These devastating numbers reflect a system that treats living beings as disposable cargo.

It’s also a climate disaster. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, industrial animal agriculture is responsible for at least 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which depends on long-haul trucking.

In the US, nearly 10 billion land animals are raised for food each year. Roughly 99 percent live in factory farms: industrial facilities located in remote rural areas where animals endure confinement, squalor, and chronic suffering. Their waste pollutes nearby waters and harms the health of local communities. 

Because these farms are often thousands of miles from slaughterhouses, our highway system doesn’t just support this supply chain — it makes it profitable.

Just as traffic engineers once promised that bigger highways as the fix for congestion (only to generate more sprawl), the meat industry has scaled up long-distance transport in the name of efficiency. This “efficiency” comes at the cost of animal welfare, environmental harm, and rural disinvestment.

Federal law treats livestock trucks like any other freight vehicle. Minimal rest requirements. No meaningful animal protection. The same pressures that make trucking dangerous for human drivers: tight delivery windows, long hours, profit-driven routing, also drive inhumane conditions for animals.

What Sustainable Transport Advocates Can Do

If we believe infrastructure shapes outcomes, then this is our fight, too.

Our efforts to reform transportation systems need to go beyond human convenience — it must be humane. A humane infrastructure agenda should include advocating for local and regional food systems that don’t require trucking animals across state lines. It should advocate for investment in local processing facilities, stronger regulation of livestock transport, and a shift away from infrastructure that enables industrial food systems.

Individual choices matter, too. Supporting local, higher-welfare farms, eating more plant-based meals, and advocating for shorter supply chains reinforces the same goals we fight for daily: fewer vehicle miles traveled, less carbon, stronger communities.

Just as biking to work or riding the bus contributes to broader system change, so does choosing a more humane and local food system. Food is a transportation issue, and individual choices are part of the solution.

A Broader Vision for Compassionate Streets

As we fight to reclaim streets for people, we must ask: what our highways are designed to carry, and who suffers as a result? 

Long-distance animal transport is a brutal, climate-intensive practice made possible by the same infrastructure that undermines walkability, divides neighborhoods, and fuels sprawl. Building truly just and sustainable transportation systems means extending our vision of compassion —beyond city limits, and beyond our own species.