• WARNING: THIS CONTENT MAY BE DISTRESSING
• A truck carrying 170 sheep has crashed in Ballarat, killing most of the animals
• Injured sheep were killed at the scene, according to Animal Liberation Victoria
• Sheep that survived the crash were loaded onto other trucks for transportation
• Animal rights activists have slammed the treatment of the helpless animals

Rescuers arrived at the crash site in Ballarat, Victoria, on Monday to find horrific scene of dead, dying and injured sheep strewn across the road and into the bush.

According to Animal Liberation Victoria, injured sheep were killed at the scene.

Stomach-churning footage of the incident shared by the group shows the bodies of dead sheep being scooped up and thrown into a metal skip.

‘There were pools of blood, limbs, organs, pieces of skin all over the crash site,’ shared Jo Osborne of Animal Liberation Victoria.

‘There were bits of flesh hanging off trees. The air smelled like the awful smell when you walk into a butcher shop. Most people would look at this and think it was horrific, but it’s no different to looking at the same thing in the butcher shop, that’s just as horrific.

‘They were all pieces of beautiful beings who did not deserve this. This is wool this is lamb. We can do better.’

Ms Osborne arrived at the scene a few hours after the accident, when most of the badly injured sheep had already been killed by the Department of Agriculture.

‘There was a big double-trailer dump truck and they were using a tractor with a scoop on the front to load all the bodies into. They just dumped them in….It was horrifying, the way that they were handling them.’

‘Obviously some of them were dead at that point but they were dragging them around by their legs and throwing them on a pile and then chucking them into the tractor,’ Ms Osborne said. ‘They just wanted to get things cleared up with absolutely no thought for the animals.’

Other scenes show the bodies of dead sheep and struggling crowded together in the undergrowth on the side of the road. Two sheep were impaled by a tree during the crash.

A man can also be seen trying to block the carnage from view and held his hat up in front of a woman trying to film the crash scene. The driver was uninjured.

‘There was a lot of blood, limbs and intestines everywhere on the wayside, it was absolutely horrific.

‘They also herded some of the sheep up the road a few hundred metres to a local property and put them in some yards there…But when we went back later to check on them, they were gone.’

After police had cleared the area, officers conducted a cursory look around in the bush, but they didn’t conduct a full sweep of the area to check for injured sheep.

‘There could have more sheep in pain out in the bush,’ Ms Osborne said. ‘These were Merino ewes, five or six years old and we suspect some of them were pregnant.’

The video has been posted online by several animal rights groups and has attracted thousands of comments from upset viewers.

‘They are being emptied into trailers like they are sh*t, with no respect at all for the pain they are suffering,’ wrote one person. ‘My heart hurts for them and the terrible torture that they are going through.’

Another asked: ‘What if it were dogs laying there instead of sheep? Why do humans not care if it’s animals destined for their stomach? This is pain and suffering regardless of what type of animal it is.’

When one person wondered about the fate of any humans involved in the crash, another replied ‘Of course I care if humans were hurt, but a human caused this crash.

‘The sheep didn’t choose to be there. It’s about abuse. A truckie chooses that job, and for all we know they probably caused the crash in the first place so yes, I care about the sheep’s injuries and deaths because they shouldn’t have been there.’

The incident comes after similar crash in Hawsham that left more than 600 cows and sheep dead.

Original Article > Mail Online by Yael Brender