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Animal Rights files complaints against rabbit farms in Meerle and Frasnes-lez-Anvaing following the horrific undercover footage of rabbits being caught and crated for transport.
Between early November 2025 and late February 2026, Animal Rights filmed the loading of rabbits at rabbit farms 26 times for transport to the two Flemish rabbit slaughterhouses, Lonki and Van Assche. Rabbits are picked up by the ears and fur, thrown around, and fall to the ground.
Animal Rights filed a complaint with the Animal Welfare Division against a Flemish rabbit breeder from Meerle and with the Parquet du Procureur du Roi de Mons, Division environnement / bien-être animal, against a Walloon rabbit breeder from Frasnes-lez-Anvaing.
The compilation footage features 18 different rabbit farms in the Netherlands, Flanders, and Wallonia. Filming took place multiple times at several farms. The transport went to rabbit slaughterhouse Lonki in Temse 19 times and to rabbit slaughterhouse Van Assche in Deinze 7 times. Animal Rights followed the transports from the slaughterhouses to the rabbit farms and back again, and filmed the loading of rabbits using a drone from the air and a telephoto lens from the ground.
Flanders and Wallonia have only a handful of rabbit farms left. Consequently, rabbits for Belgian slaughterhouses and supermarket shelves are primarily kept in the Netherlands, often with a lower welfare standard than is required in Belgium. This also means that rabbits are frequently mistreated in the Netherlands during catching and loading into crates, but are loaded into Flemish trucks by Belgian drivers on their way to Flemish slaughterhouses.
For the Netherlands has no rabbit slaughterhouses, and rabbit meat is hardly eaten there outside of Christmas and Easter. The transport of rabbits for Lonki is carried out using trucks from ADL Transport, which, like Lonki, is based in Temse. Van Assche has a smaller truck of its own, but primarily uses the trucks of poultry transporter Kruiskip from Zulte.
Compilation of footage from the Netherlands and Belgium
Meerle
In Meerle (Antwerp province, a sub-municipality of Hoogstraten), the rabbits at the Pijnenenborg-Jansens farm, which switched from dairy cattle to rabbits about 5 years ago, are lifted primarily by their fur, but also by their ears, or by a single ear. This is prohibited under the European transport regulation. Consequently, all handling of the rabbits in the footage is illegal and punishable.
In Meerle, rabbits are stuffed from their cages into overcrowded shopping carts (or variations thereof), crammed on top of each other, the animals at the bottom crushed under the weight of the animals above them.
Many loaders handle multiple rabbits by the ears or fur in one hand, like laundry from a laundry basket, causing a rabbit to regularly fall to the ground or back into the shopping cart.
Rabbits are very regularly thrown from a height into low crates and drawers.
Because employees position themselves and the shopping carts poorly, rabbits are often thrown over a distance.
Regularly, rabbits are walked over longer distances in hand, by the ears or fur, without support.
Due to the small openings in the crates at the Lonki slaughterhouse and the rough work of the loaders, the rabbits often hit the plastic edges.
One employee works more roughly than another, but, remarkably (or perhaps not at all in this industry), we have nowhere observed employees correcting each other, or parents correcting their children who are helping out.
At all locations, the driver, and thereby the representative, of the transport company and the slaughterhouse is watching, both on foot and from his forklift. Nowhere do we see a driver intervene.
The statues from Meerle (Hoogstraten)
Frasnes-lez-Anvaing
In Arc-Ainières, a sub-municipality of the Walloon municipality of Frasnes-lez-Anvaing in the province of Hainaut, rabbits at the recently established Aurelap farm are primarily lifted by their ears. This is a strictly prohibited form of animal cruelty.
Rabbits weigh about two and a half kilos before slaughter, but nowhere are the animals supported.
Here too, overloaded shopping carts are used, in which the animals at the bottom are crushed under the weight of the rabbits above them, transporting the rabbits from their cages to the loading transport containers of carrier Kruiskip and rabbit slaughterer Van Assche.
The images from Frasnes-lez-Anvaing
Violations of Welfare
Rabbits are prey animals. Being picked up is an inherently stressful experience for them. The rabbit breeder and his or her employees are predators to the rabbits. Fleeing is impossible, fighting back is futile. This form of stress is a violation of welfare inherent in the industry that breeds and fattens rabbits for slaughter.
The rough handling of rabbits during catching, moving, and placing in crates for transport causes fear and pain in addition to stress.
A third impairment of well-being is sensory overstimulation from light, sound, and smell; from the forklift, the stacking and picking up of crates, employees, and exhaust fumes.
Poultry and rabbit transporter Kruiskip in Zulte
Legal framework
According to the European Transport Regulation, it is prohibited, among other things, “to lift or drag animals by the ears, fur and legs, or to treat them in such a way as to cause them unnecessary pain or suffering” .
According to the Belgian Animal Welfare Code, no one may, except in cases of force majeure, perform acts “which cause an animal to die unnecessarily or cause the animal’s welfare to be harmed unnecessarily in another way on a physiological and/or ethological level.”
According to the 'Decree of the Flemish Government concerning the welfare of rabbits in breeding farms', “unnecessary suffering or stress is avoided” when handling the rabbits . They are never lifted by the ears or limbs.
The most recent scientific advice from the EU stipulates that rabbits must always be supported outside the cage or crate.
Reactions in the Netherlands
On July 4, RTL Nieuws in the Netherlands showed undercover footage from Animal Rights from the rabbit industry during the 6:00 PM and 7:30 PM news broadcasts: “Throwing, grabbing by the ears, and even slamming them to death against the ground. All sorts of things go wrong at breeders in the Netherlands during the catching and loading of meat rabbits.”
The RTL News broadcast
The NVWA, responsible for animal welfare supervision in the Netherlands like the FAVV in Belgium, “was stunned upon seeing the footage” and said in response: “We have viewed the footage, indeed, and to be honest, it left us speechless. The way these companies treat these rabbits is downright appalling and reprehensible. […] We are also going to invite the sector here to our office for a serious discussion and, yes, we are of course going to investigate the footage, and if that footage provides grounds for enforcement, then we will do so.”
The Dutch rabbit sector itself also responded: “We have seen the images and are truly shocked.” It promises measures.
The reaction of the rabbit sector in the Netherlands
On July 5 and 6, parliamentary questions were submitted to the State Secretary and the Minister of Agriculture “regarding the structural suffering of rabbits and new footage of serious violations in the Dutch meat rabbit industry” by the Party for the Animals and governing party D66.
In Belgium, it has remained practically dead silent until now.
End rabbit farming!
Rabbits spend the 11 weeks between their birth and their journey to the slaughterhouse in cage systems without the opportunity to exhibit natural behavior. There is little to no room to hop and run, and no opportunity to dig. These rabbits never go outside and never see direct daylight. They do not live in natural group compositions, walk on a surface with cracks, are constantly situated above their own excrement, and breathe in the ammonia fumes from it. In addition, there is the continuous noise from mechanical ventilation and music systems.
After 11 weeks of captivity in cages, the rabbits are crammed into overcrowded shopping carts, lifted by their ears or fur, and thrown into crates.
The inspection reports drawn up at the slaughterhouses show that there are abuses there as well.
According to Animal Rights, it is time to conclude that rabbit farming is in no way capable of meeting the needs of rabbits and that rabbits are completely unsuitable for the livestock industry. We must therefore stop searching for ever-small, often imaginary, improvements in farming conditions and shut down this sector.
