Joanna Lumley has sent a message to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as she handed in a petition to Downing Street, calling on the government to stand by their pledge on animal exports.
Speaking to GB News' Political Editor, Christopher Hope, the actress and activist spoke of the petition, which demands the government to keep their policy on a ban on live animal exports out of the UK.
Lumley said: "“We’ve come to deliver over 95,000 signatures to the Prime Minister. In May of this year, after 18 months of dallying and shilly shallying and dawdling, finally the government withdrew the bill that you just promised, which was going to ban live exports. And we think this is just letting down animals and on a horrific level.
"And we've got all these 95,000 signatures of people. I mean, there would have been more if we'd had more time. Because how this government to stand by its commitment to ban the trade and on the Prime Minister show, to show, you know, true leadership for the welfare of animals. And we're delivering it to him today. And just, I mean, I know the world is full of horrors, but there's no need for this little extra horror to be there.
"The point about live transport is that the animals have been taken abroad for fattening and for slaughtering. It could easily be what we call chilled meat trade. You just slaughter them here, near to where they're they go over to the country and so on."
Lumley continued: “At the moment, life, there are no good rules protecting them, and so they can go down and down and down. They don't have Larry, which means being looked after overnight. They travel sick. They arrive in horrific conditions. Slaughterhouse conditions are unparalleled in horror and we can't see any reason for it. There's no reason quite apart from being an animal lover.
“There are all sorts of people around who just go, this is not right. We’ve all seen lorries jammed with creatures. You can see the fleeces of sheep sticking through. You can see little calves, faces looking out. It's really the treatment of farm animals who have no voice. We're all concerned with this because we all eat them.
“We all see them in fields. We all understand them when you go for chicken burgers from farm animals. So we've just got to protect them. We've got to make sure that they have a decent life. I think that campaigning is really just standing up for things you believe to be right.”
Watch the interview in full above.
