The Gulf Livestock 1 livestock carrier sank two years ago today in the East China Sea. On their way to be murdered, 5,867 cows instead drowned approximately 100 miles off the coast of Amami Oshima. The Japanese Coast Guard recovered three crew members from among the floating cattle corpses. The remaining forty are presumed dead, following the Coast Guard's suspension of its search for survivors on 2020-09-09.

I started writing an article on the Gulf Livestock 1 immediately after hearing it had sunk. While writing that article, I found my thoughts circling around a particular phrase: "these animals should never have been at sea." Two years later, I am still thinking about that phrase.

In 2021, Israeli activists filmed a docking and unloading of the carrier's successor, the Gulf Livestock 2, in Haifa, Israel. The images were described to European Parliament as showing "severely injured calves [...] covered in blood and in a clear state of distress."

As I write this, the Gulf Livestock 2 is sailing off the coast of Almeria, Spain. It has a gross tonnage of 12,072 tons, and holds around 15,000 cattle at any particular time.