Conclusion Humanitarian Imaginaries

Live animal maritime transport did not of course begin with UNRRA and the Heifer Project, just as it would not end with them. Animals have been carried aboard ships for as long as maritime vessels have existed. Since ancient times horses and mules have been shipped across waters to meet the military needs of troops fighting wars across the globe. Livestock animals have provided a source of fresh meat (or, depending on the animal type, a source of milk as well) for crews sailing the world for commerce and conquest. Certain animal species—cattle, horses, goats, and sheep—have been part and parcel of transplanting societies and cultures to colonial contexts.¹ As the new global food economy started to take shape at the end of the nineteenth century with the rapid growth of railway networks and the expansion of the steamship industry, some of these same species met growing demand across settler societies for specific kinds of “live meat.”² Alternatively, pets and animal mascots made for sentimental companions on both merchant and military maritime vessels, with some animals carried aboard simply for good luck. Exotic animals captured in the wild were transported on ships, too, en route to new confinements in menageries and zoos, where they would become living testaments to imperial power. Sometimes particularly rare or seemingly exotic animals formed part of a diplomatic arsenal of lavish gifts offered by one ruler to another.³

The transport of live animals across oceans has continued into the twenty-first century. Long-haul “live export ships” are enormous oceangoing vessels that carry thousands of livestock animals from one destination to another. Most of these animals are bound, ultimately, for slaughterhouses, where they are transformed into animal protein for human consumption. The maritime live animal transport industry has quadrupled in the last half century, and this growth mirrors the rapid expansion of intensive animal farming or “factory farming”; Australia, South America, and the European Union dominate the industry.⁴

China is a main target market, but the Middle East, with its lack of space and water but a growing taste for “fresh” meat and dairy as well as a need for halal meat, is the most common destination for sheep in particular. As early as the 1970s, the largest Australian carrier of sheep, the Cormoran, accommodated twenty-eight thousand animals per sailing; that number was surpassed later in the decade with ships that could carry an astounding fifty thousand animals. But the largest-ever animal transport ship, the Al Qurain, was purpose-built to accommodate ninety-two thousand sheep; it was sailing as early as in the 1980s. Typically, however, live export ships are smaller; today they generally carry anywhere from a few thousand to over ten thousand animals.⁵ Stock people are limited to just a few per sailing as mechanization has ostensibly replaced much of the labor-intensive work that cattlemen—like the Brethren Service Committee’s seagoing cowboys—used to do.

The vast majority of livestock ships are better described as “floating feedlots.” They are converted car carriers or container ships and sometimes even oil tankers; these are ships that have been retrofitted quickly and cheaply to accommodate as many animals as possible over several tiers or floors. They do not always meet animal welfare standards, which, at any rate, vary by country of origin and are loose, weak, and difficult to enforce. Moreover, because these vessels were not purpose-built, their structure does not account for the unique challenges that “living cargo” creates. What this means, for example, is that if too many animals—particularly those that have been stacked or tiered—choose to move to one side of the ship all at once, then the ship’s stability is compromised, and it risks overturning. These can be particularly dangerous ships to sail. Only 20 percent of the current livestock fleet in the world today was designed to carry livestock specifically. Whereas the average age of a commercial container ship is thirteen years, the average age of a ship in the livestock carrier fleet is about three times that at thirty-eight years.⁶

For the animals the conditions on the ships are important, as we have seen, especially given that some transports can take weeks rather than merely days to complete, and if a ship has mechanical problems, then the already tortuously long journeys take even longer. The animals that make these trips are confined in unfamiliar habitats with high noise levels and strange light patterns and intensities. They have no choice but to adjust quickly to their new and hastily established social groups and to their new human handlers, who sometimes have limited experience caring for such large numbers of a specific species. They are packed in to optimize space use and restrict movement; the result is high stocking densities and extreme overcrowding in what are sometimes rough seas in all types of weather and, depending on the route and its length, through changing climate and time zones. Nevertheless, the more animals that can be loaded onto a single ship, the higher the profits for the various stakeholders involved: livestock suppliers, the ship companies, and the meat producers. Some of the most popular and regularly traveled routes are also the longest. The pressure to make trips worthwhile from a financial standpoint is reflected in the large vessel sizes that dominate on the longest routes.⁷

The animals face numerous discomforts on the trips. There is often not enough room for all of them to lie down, and at any rate, lying down carries with it the risk of being stepped on and smothered. As a result, some species, like cattle, become exhausted and weak from standing for the entire journey. The sawdust that is used for bedding is very limited so as to maintain the specially designed nonslip cleating and abrasive surfaces that often make up the vessels’ floors. But the rough surfaces mean more discomfort for animals, both when they are standing still and when they have a chance to lie down. Sometimes the animals develop skin abrasions and lesions on their feet because they remain upright for so long. Even small wounds can become infected quickly in the generally unhygienic conditions. The animals spend the voyages covered in excrement and urine, and the smell that this produces announces the ship’s entry into its destination harbor long before docking. Moreover, the feces that end up covering animals’ coats diminishes their ability to regulate body temperature, and this can quickly lead to heat stress, increased respiration rates, renal dysfunction, and eventually death. The buildup of urine also contributes to the accumulation of high ammonia levels in the cramped quarters (particularly on closed decks where ventilation is restricted or inadequate), and this in turn can cause pulmonary inflammation and mucosal irritation. It also compromises the structural integrity of the ship itself. Manure ferments and releases moisture, ammonia, and carbon dioxide, which interact with the chloride that the animals excrete naturally; the result is a “slurry” that can corrode steel and damage the decks.⁸

Animals that are suffering from heat exhaustion or have untreated infections will experience inanition—they stop drinking and eating—which will then precipitate dehydration and starvation; this, of course, will only hasten their deaths. The food on offer is unfamiliar; besides, it takes a while for digestive systems to adjust to dramatic changes in diet. The water and the food troughs are often contaminated with feces anyway, which then become further sources of illness. The fact that the floors are covered in feces makes animals reluctant to lie down, even where there is an opportunity, leading, again, to exhaustion and the attendant risks. Infections can travel easily from one animal to another in the generally crowded conditions aboard the ships; conjunctivitis is a common risk for cattle in particular.

Though it is considered best practice not to ship pregnant animals, it happens that sometimes they find themselves on board and even give birth on the ships. These are very high-risk births that endanger the health of the mother, to say nothing of the newborns, who are not worth the effort they require and are often killed immediately. This can in turn lead to mastitis for the mother. Dead animals (newborns and adults alike) are removed as quickly as possible and when circumstances allow but definitely before the ship reaches port, as the unloading of dead animals in plain sight risks negative publicity for the shipping company as well as for the producer that will eventually sell the animals for their meat potential. Identifying tags often attached to ears are removed from the dead animals’ heads before they are thrown overboard so that the carcasses cannot be linked to a specific ship; no company involved in any part of the food production process—because this is overwhelmingly about food—wants the bad publicity that comes with dead animals.⁹

Regulations for live export ships vary greatly by country, but in general the rules are lax and subject to interpretation. Conditions aboard ships can be difficult to monitor, and the resources are often not available to do so properly, even when the will exists. There are also no legal requirements to report mortality rates on live export vessels. Here Australia has been an exception to some extent: Australian laws require reporting on ships with a loss rate that exceeds 1 percent. Loss rates of 1 percent are quite acceptable, generally speaking. On a ship with fifty thousand animals aboard, that means that only deaths in excess of five hundred ought to be reported. This reported mortality rate functions as the main measure of animal welfare in the wider industry.¹⁰

Sometimes stunningly high losses make the international news, as happened in 2015 when 40 percent of the animals (5,200) that had arrived in Jordan from Romania were dead from dehydration and starvation. In late 2019 an old Romanian ship carrying more than fourteen thousand sheep to Saudi Arabia capsized. The crew of twenty-two persons all survived. Only 180 sheep, or just over 1 percent, lived. Only when a human animal is killed or seriously injured on a live animal transport vessel does the International Maritime Organization require an investigation. Many livestock ships also fly under so-called flags of convenience and have disproportionately high infraction rates, according to the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control. This agreement was signed by twenty-seven maritime organizations and covers waters between Europe and North America. Member states have agreed to work together to inspect ships, to ensure that they meet safety and environmental standards, and to monitor compliance with international maritime conventions; the International Maritime Organization completes thousands of inspections in these waters every year.¹¹

There are, however, enormous changes coming to the live animal export industry. In April 2023 New Zealand ceased exports of livestock by sea.¹² In May 2024 the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Act became law in Great Britain; the law bans the export of cattle, horses, pigs, goats, and sheep for the purposes of slaughter and fattening (live export for the purposes of breeding remains permitted).¹³ In early 2025, Wellard, the leading Australian livestock shipping company, announced that it was selling its last ship and reconsidering the direction of its business.¹⁴ Australia plans to end the export of live sheep by sea by 2028.¹⁵ The subject is a contentious one across the continent and indeed the world. Kristen Stilt, director of Harvard’s Animal Law and Policy program, has suggested that the transport of and trade in live animals is approaching its end and will be replaced by the transport of chilled and frozen meat. That may well turn out to be the case. But for the time being, the global live export trade continues to be worth billions of dollars.¹⁶

Live animal maritime transport in the immediate postwar period was different in important ways. The major differences between then and now stem from the fact that the UNRRA and Heifer Project animals were part of a distinctive project, a mission with a grand purpose. The animals were supposed to arrive at their destinations healthy enough to work and to contribute immediately and for the long term to postwar reconstruction. They were not awaiting almost immediate slaughter, and as such they needed attentive care during the ocean voyages to ensure their physical and psychological well-being upon arrival. As we have seen, this care was provided by the seagoing cowboys, who, at a ratio of twenty-some animals to one cowboy, depending on the specific load and on the species, had ample time to feed the animals, to clean their stalls, and generally to monitor their physical conditions and report problems to the on-board veterinarians. The cowboys were doing a job and were well compensated for it, but, beyond that, the specific subset of men we have focused on in this book saw their work as at least in part an obligation to their communities, their churches, their God, or humanity itself. The success of their mission—the well-being of the cattle and horses—mattered to them personally. It also mattered to the many small American communities from which the men came and that had invested so many material and emotional resources in making this program of postwar aid function smoothly.

Despite this, similarities between live animal maritime transport at mid-century and today remain. Speed and size mattered after the war just as they matter today. In our modern period, commercial enterprises use the fastest ships available to transport the greatest number of animals per sailing; quick deliveries and turnaround times translate into higher profits. For UNRRA the motivation to move the animals quickly stemmed from a desire to stimulate agriculture and self-sufficiency sooner rather than later; it mattered if the animals arrived in time for spring planting in 1946 or not. Besides, UNRRA was always meant to be a temporary organization, and it had only a short window to complete its work.

We have seen throughout this book that the maritime transport of animals, even in the best of circumstances and even when it is conducted with the best of intentions, comes with risks and costs that are borne first and foremost by the animals themselves. Discomforts could be mitigated, but there was nothing that could change the fact of being immobile in a stall on a rocking ship in the ocean for days on end; this has remained a constant feature of maritime animal transport throughout centuries. There are simply significant practical challenges involved in moving animals across oceans. UNRRA was acutely aware of these challenges from the beginning, and indeed its initial reluctance to include living animals in its relief program reflected this understanding. Yet ultimately UNRRA was persuaded that animals were crucially important to the organization’s rehabilitation agenda. Like all stakeholders, UNRRA expected and accepted the “losses” that would stack up during the trips; animal deaths, regrettably, were simply part and parcel of improving human lives.

By following the relief animals from point of origin to point of delivery, we have traveled through many different contexts and explored several layered histories. We have visited the international realm, where the idea that the United Nations could and should come together to provide humanitarian aid to the victims of Nazi aggression was born. This was an abstract realm of imaginings, hopes, and wishes, to be sure, but it was also a space of planning and calculation; it was from here that UNRRA and its live animal aid program emerged. In addition, we have spent time in the American context so as to understand the various dimensions—political, social, economic, moral, and religious—that supported humanitarian aid provision in theory and in practice. In this American context, too, we have seen how the perceived need for humanitarian aid mobilized the Brethren in a very creative and unique way. As the Brethren’s Gospel Messenger reported at the end of 1946, it was through the Heifer Project and through the Brethren Service Committee’s management of the seagoing cowboys program that the Brethren “became international”; the Brethren came to understand, even more than they had before, that “we are one world.”¹⁷ The seagoing cowboys’ labor on the oceangoing ships with horses and dairy cattle was critical in realizing the bold ambitions of postwar humanitarianism. This book brings attention to at least some of those cowboys and to the animals that formed a crucially important component of postwar relief practices and goals but that, despite this importance, have been largely overlooked in the literature on mid-century humanitarianism as well as in the popular imagination.

Our final stop in this book has been the Polish context, one of the many end points for relief animals in both the UNRRA and Heifer Project programs. As we know, of the few hundred thousand living animals shipped by UNRRA to all possible destinations, approximately half went to Poland alone. And though the number of animals the Heifer Project delivered to Poland was less than a thousand, this was still more than any other single country received during the UNRRA period. Poland thus provides a rich landscape for exploring what happened to these animals upon arrival and what these animals meant in both symbolic and practical terms.

In some ways the animal deliveries to Poland form part of a simple success story. Horses used their considerable strength to cultivate ruined and abandoned fields in Poland and to facilitate agricultural rehabilitation faster and better than would have been possible otherwise. As UNRRA analysts calculated at the end of the program, every fifth hectare of land in rural Poland was being farmed with the aid of an UNRRA horse.¹⁸ The horses maximized the value of other types of relief as well. What use were thousands of pounds of seeds, for example, if there was no animal manure to fertilize the fields or draft power to make sowing and harvesting possible?

Dairy cattle labor was likewise essential to agricultural development. All major stakeholders in the postwar period—politicians, nutritionists, UNRRA bureaucrats, the Brethren Service Committee, the seagoing cowboys, and regular people too—believed that the milk that cows produced had unparalleled nutritional value. UNRRA presented a snapshot in mid-1946 of the effects that its cattle shipments were already having on relief and rehabilitation in Poland. It estimated that 40 percent of the heifers distributed in Poland had calves shortly after arriving in the country and that the total milk production that resulted from these animals was 225,750 pounds per day (using an average of 20 to 30 pounds per day); that was enough milk to supply 112,875 persons with one quart of milk per day.¹⁹ By 1947 milk production in Poland was still only at one-fifth of the prewar level, but that was far better than it would have been without the infusion of animals from abroad.²⁰ All of this shows us that animal labor mattered in the immediate postwar period. It reminds us, too, that the animals functioned—to use the title of a recent book by Benjamin Meiches—as “nonhuman humanitarians.” Humanitarianism was (and remains) a heterogenous project that involves the labor of both human and nonhuman actors.²¹

In addition to having practical value, the animals reflected—more powerfully than a crate of tinned food ever could—the bold ambitions of mid-century humanitarianism. Never before in peacetime had so many large living animals been shipped in such a short time to reach so many people.²² As we have seen, the Brethren reflected frequently in the UNRRA period on cattle’s special status and on this species’ ability to “do good,” to make a difference in people’s lives for both the short and the long terms, and to show that collective action on behalf of others was worth taking. What cattle offered did not need translation, the Brethren said, because relief cattle spoke an “international language,” one that promised “a more abundant tomorrow.” The gift of a cow was a direct gesture of humanitarian aid, and it delivered the same powerful message to all people everywhere: “Someone still cares. Christian goodwill has survived the war.—There is a chance to begin again. There is yet hope for a world of peace.”²³

While the relief animals did not, in the end, achieve world peace or solve global hunger, they did help some people rebuild their lives in this short time between the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War. That the animals lived into the period of the People’s Republic of Poland—and that their descendants exist even today, in the Third Republic—is important, too. These animals represent a small point of continuity between political regimes and historical periods. And perhaps they continue to exist too as symbols of long-forgotten ideals, of communities imagined, however briefly, on an international scale.

As caretakers of both the Heifer Project and the UNRRA animals, the seagoing cowboys played a unique role in mid-century humanitarianism. They got their hands dirty. They carried hay bales and bags of feed. They shoveled manure and tended to sick and dying animals. They endured seasickness and uncomfortable conditions aboard the ships. They did the unglamorous but indispensable work of the live animal aid program. This was also largely hidden work that happened in crowded animal stalls. It is thanks to the cowboys themselves that we know so much about what it was like aboard the ships. Over the subsequent decades, Brethren and Mennonite cowboys in particular talked often about the time when they “saw the world” from a cattle boat. These men returned to America with photographs to share and stories to tell, and, indeed, telling the story—“recounting witness,” as the Brethren like to say—has become an important part of Brethren relief work to this day.²⁴ Cowboys’ willingness to talk about their experiences is what allows us to write this history in the first place. It is, as we have seen, a history full of surprising intersections and unexpected layers.

Perhaps most surprisingly and unexpectedly, a book about one small part of postwar aid programming in Poland turns out to have contemporary relevance for the same general region in Europe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in 2022 has highlighted global food security issues and raised concerns about the impact of food scarcity on political and social stability. Ukraine has long been imagined—by Hitler and the Nazis, by various incarnations of the Russian state, and in different ways by the west, too—as a breadbasket zone, as a land of nearly limitless food resources available for others to use and exploit. Since the start of the war, various international actors and media outlets have expressed concern about how the war threatens the world’s grain supply and what, in turn, this means.²⁵ Animals have a role in these broader discourses too; animals, as we have seen, are integral to discussions about agriculture and food security, whether in times of war or peace.

What has happened with farm animals in Ukraine since the Russian invasion is broadly familiar from the mid-century context. Tens of thousands of cattle were killed in the first months of the war alone, whether by bombs, for food, or from starvation, and numbers decreased further in the subsequent months.²⁶ Decaying animal carcasses pose a health and environmental risk. In some areas civilians have been killed, displaced, or drafted—meaning that farm work has had to adjust accordingly—and both infrastructure and farm machinery have been damaged. Fields in key areas are littered with mines and unexploded ordinance and thus are too dangerous to be used as pastureland or for planting. Even if some lands are usable and specific herds safe, costs of just about everything associated with agricultural production have risen. Transport and sale networks have also been disrupted, which means that agricultural supplies (including feed for the animals) cannot always reach their destinations, and foodstuffs produced on farms cannot always get to where they are supposed to go either. At any rate where the food products are needed has itself changed as millions of people have left the country since the start of the Russian invasion.

In this context keeping dairy herds alive and maintaining the strength of the dairy industry has taken on symbolic importance and becomes part and parcel of resistance and survival; it has become part of waging war by different means.²⁷ The Association of Milk Producers, a nongovernmental not-for-profit agency that represents dairy farmers across Ukraine, made the following rhetorically powerful statement on World Milk Day, June 1, 2024: “Milk is a global product, an indispensable element of healthy nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, of happy and healthy childhood, responsible food production and ensuring social stability of households and communities, and food security of countries [sic].”²⁸ This expression of contemporary enthusiasm for milk brings us back to the mid-1940s and that era’s belief in dairy milk’s ability to nourish humans both literally and metaphorically. It also reminds us that our relationship with nonhuman animals is always meaningful and always open to interpretation. It is through those relationships that we reflect our identities, aspirations, and anxieties.