Are 2,853 cows stranded at sea off Turkey victims of the Gaza/Israel war?
Or are the heifers just more casualties of business as usual in the livestock shipping racket?
UPDATE: According to VesselFinder.com, the Spiridon II left port at Bandırma soon after the international news network SkyNews aired a report about it, approximately 16 hours after the following ANIMALS 24-7 coverage was posted. Reports VesselFinder.com, Spiridon II “is en route to Montevideo, Uruguay, sailing at a speed of 8.9 knots and expected to arrive there on December 14, 2025, at noon.”
SkyNews said that according to the Animal Welfare Foundation, “140 of the heifers reportedly gave birth, and that 50 newborn calves were ‘detected,’ but it was unclear if all the calves were alive.”
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BANDIRMA, Turkey––2,845 Holstein heifers, at last report, remain alive aboard the 52-year-old livestock carrier Spiridon II, 57 days after sailing from Montevideo, Uruguay, including 22 days in quarantine off Bandırma, a port city of about 167,000 people on the southern shores of the Sea of Marmara.
58 heifers from the original cargo of 2,901 are known to have died.
Why the surviving heifers are still quarantined, still aboard the Spiridon II, is not exactly as black-and-white as the heifers themselves.
Ear tags
“Veterinary authorities are refusing to allow them to disembark due to a controversy over ear tags that guarantee, among other things, the exact origin and health monitoring of the animals,” explained the New York City-based shipping trade publication MarineLink on November 12, 2025.
Elaborated Turkish Minute, produced in Germany by expatriate Turkish journalists who have fled state censorship and repression under the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime, “The communications directorate said an application was submitted on October 21, 2025 to the Bandırma Port Veterinary Border Control Point for the import of 2,901 breeding cattle from Uruguay on behalf of 15 companies.
High-seas cattle rustling?
“But when the cattle arrived,” Turkish Minute continued, “veterinary inspectors found some of them lacked ear tags or electronic identity chips, while another 469 did not match the description listed on the paperwork.
“Due to these irregularities, entry of the shipment into the country was not permitted,” the Turkish communications directorate reportedly said on X.
A cargo of unidentified and/or misidentified heifers would be of concern to any nation, lest the animals be unidentified or misidentified to try to conceal health issues, possibly including contagious disease––or, perhaps, be stolen, though high seas cattle rustling has rarely if ever occurred.
But other issues may be involved.
Holstein dairy cow. (Beth Clifton photo)
Or destination Israel?
The Animal Welfare Foundation, the charitable arm of the British Veterinary Association, “said the animals were destined for breeders in Turkey and the Middle East, notably Israel,” reported Agence France-Presse.
Israel had already purchased 31,800 cattle from Uruguay earlier in 2025, according to data published by MarineLink. Unknown is whether those cattle arrived in Israel by way of Turkey.
“The Turkish government halted direct trade with Israel in May 2024,” added Turkish Minute, “in response to growing domestic outrage over Israel’s military actions in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. The decision followed weeks of public protests and sharp criticism from Turkish officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused Israel of ‘genocidal behavior.’”
Despite the trade ban, however, “Turkey exported nearly $394 million worth of goods to Israel in the first five months of 2025, according to data from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics,” Turkish Minute reported on July 2, 2025.
“Carcasses stored in large bags on the deck”
Animal Save Movement Turkey has spoken out on behalf of the stranded heifers, posting photographs “showing what appear to be carcasses stored in large bags on the deck” of the Spiridon II, according to Mike Schuler of gCaptain, a shipping trade periodical based in San Luis Obispo, California.
But the surviving 2,845 heifers and 20 crew members remain “trapped aboard the aging vessel in what animal welfare advocates are calling a humanitarian and animal welfare crisis,” Schuler wrote.
“The Spiridon II is a former Russian general cargo ship converted into a livestock carrier in 2011 and flies the Togo flag,” summarized MarineLink.
“Togo, a narrow strip of land on Africa’s west coast, has for years been the target of criticism over its human rights record and political governance,” according to the BBC News Country Profile.
Bad reputation
Togo “appears on the black list maintained by the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control,” MarineLink said.
The Spiridon II is registered by a company called Equasis “to JMR Shipping in Honduras,” managed by “Murr Management based in Lebanon,” reported Karen Ng for the Singapore shipping industry periodical Tradewinds News.
Equasis is also internationally blacklisted for flunking inspections, Ng added.
Reported the British newspaper Conservative Post, “In a podcast recorded shortly after departure in Uruguay, Ganosan Livestock exporter Fernando Fernández, who organised the export, said that around half of the cattle on board Spiridon II are pregnant heifers.”
Continued MarineLink, “The Spiridon II has been detained nine times since 2009. Since 2019, port inspections have identified 167 deficiencies on board relating to working conditions, pollution prevention, life-saving appliances, fire safety, navigation safety, and structural condition,” a management record not unusual in the international livestock shipping industry.
Poorly maintained vessels
International high seas livestock shipping is notoriously dominated by poorly maintained vessels converted to carry cattle and sheep after reaching obsolescence for their original intended purposes, usually as container ships, tankers, and car ferries, flagged by developing world nations in whose ports the vessels may never have anchored.
“The most recent inspections [of the Spiridon II],” MarineLink recounted, “were carried out in Piraeus, Greece, on August 23, 2024, finding 10 deficiencies; and in Beirut, Lebanon, on October 30, 2024, finding three deficiencies; and on July 26, 2025, finding four deficiencies.”
These most recent inspections came after the Spiridon II “was approved by the European Union’s Directorate-General for Health & Food Safety and used to transport livestock between European ports and North African and Eastern Mediterranean countries until at least mid-2024,” MarineLink said.
The Spiridon II “was briefly allowed to dock” on November 9, 2025 “to load feed and bedding before anchoring offshore again,” Turkish Minute reported, adding that “Residents in Bandırma have complained about the stench and spoken of swarms of flies around the vessel,” according to “local Turkish media.”
“Gentle animals really need some decency”
“These gentle animals really need some decency extended to them from the authorities,” said British former livestock export veterinarian Lynn Simpson, speaking to MarineLink.
“Decisions need to be made one way or another to get these animals off the ship, be it alive or euthanized,” declared Simpson, herself a veteran of more than 50 livestock export voyages.
“It is not acceptable to deliberately keep these animals in what must by now be atrocious conditions,” Simpson emphasized. “If the ship was adhering to MARPOL,” the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, “she would not have washed the decks of sewerage buildup since before passing through the strait of Gibraltar, that is nearly a month ago. These ships are revolting with sewerage buildup after five days,” Simpson said, “and the associated heat, humidity, and ammonia gas.”
“The crew would be almost as desperate as the cattle to get off the ship at this point,” Simpson added. “It is grueling and depressing work tending to exhausted, stressed animals who should never have been onboard a ship in the first place, let alone for close to two months.”
“As long as such transports are permitted, these tragedies will continue to happen”
Agreed Animal Welfare Foundation veterinarian Maria Boada Sana, to Karen Ng of Tradewinds News, “After such a long voyage, these cattle are exhausted, dehydrated and in urgent need of care. Every additional day at sea means further suffering,
“As long as such transports are permitted, these tragedies will continue to happen,” Sana added, but a halt to maritime transport of cattle and sheep is unlikely.
Uruguay alone exported 265,000 live cattle in 2024, almost all by sea. Brazil, neighboring Uruguay to the north, exported 883,500 live cattle. Argentina, after prohibiting live cattle exports for 52 years, lifted the ban in March 2025 to remain competitive with Brazil and Uruguay.
The French animal advocacy organization Robin des Bois told Agence France Press that it understood “Talks are underway to extend the voyage and deliver the Spiridon II animals to Ukraine,” which if true could add another three to six weeks to the heifers’ time aboard ship, and would require the Spiridon II to cross through the Russia/Ukraine war zone.
Trouble by the truckload
The Spiridon II debacle is scarcely unprecedented. As recently as September 2024, Turkish authorities held a truckload of 69 pregnant cows from Germany for a month at the Kapikule border crossing before finally killing them, the German organization Animals Angels reported.
“Since 2010, Animals’ Angels and the Animal Welfare Foundation have called for an immediate end to animal transports to Turkey,” Animals Angels said at the time.
“These transports are incompatible with animal welfare requirements, as stated in Article 3 of European Commission Regulations: ‘No one shall carry out or arrange for the transport of animals if it is likely to cause them injury or unnecessary suffering,’” Animals Angels declared.
The Karim Allah & the Elbeik
In more closely comparable incidents involving cattle shipments to Turkey, Spanish slaughtermen in March 2021 killed 864 bullocks aboard the Karim Allah and 1,610 steers aboard the Elbeik, after both live cargoes spent months stranded in the Mediterranean Sea.
The 895 bullocks were loaded about the Karim Allah at Cartagena, Spain, in mid-December 2020, of whom 31 apparently died at sea, 22 of them on the initially scheduled voyage to Turkey.
The Elbeik was loaded at about the same time in Tarragona, Spain, subsequently experiencing a reported 179 cattle deaths at sea.
Turkey refused both shipments, believing the bullocks to be infected with the insect-borne disease bluetongue. The Karim Allah and the Elbeik then sought to deliver the cattle to Tripoli, Libya, where the animals were also refused.
The cattle were returned to Spain, but could not be unloaded there, either, because of a European Union ban on cattle imports from Libya, imposed because both bluetongue and foot-and-mouth disease are endemic to Libya.
(See Sheep & cattle stranded at sea by Suez Canal blockage are moving again.)
The Ocean Drover
Commented Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases [ProMED] livestock diseases moderator Arnon Shimshony, “The whole event may be reminiscent of the 2012 Ocean Drover event, when a sheep consignment from Australia to the Gulf states was rejected due to animal health reservations, eventually ending up in Pakistan after being anchored off a Bahrain port for at least a fortnight.
“Return to Australia was rejected by the Australian authorities. Testing on arrival in Pakistan cleared the sheep of ill-health concerns,” Shimshony recalled, but all 22,000 sheep were slaughtered and dumped anyway, largely for political reasons. The killing was conducted in a manner, moreover, that appalled both media and shipping industry witnesses.
(See Australian sheep export to Bahrain meets “bloody & miserable end” in Pakistan.)
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