PROTESTERS against live exports and calf processing held a demonstration outside Haslingden Auction Mart - when it was closed.

More than 30 campaigners from Blackburn, Preston and Bolton arrived on Saturday morning with placards and banners to highlight the suffering inflicted on thousands of exported animals to find the market shut and no staff or farmers in sight.

Undeterred, the campaigners held a picket on a traffic island outside. Carol Duggan from the Lancashire branch of Compassion in World Farming said: "It is a shame there were no farmers there. They sometimes open on Saturdays.

"I would have preferred it if we could have talked to them but we gathered at the roundabout and passed our message on to motorists."

The campaigners from CIWF, Preston Action for Animals and Bolton Animal Rights, protested until 4pm.

They claim that exported animals are forced to endure journeys lasting up to 50 hours without food or water to arrive at continental abattoirs notorious for their cruelty.

The group claims there is no economic need for British farmers to export live sheep as the BSE crisis has turned the public away from beef to lamb, prices of which have increased by 30 per cent in the last year.

CIWF supporters want the animals to be sent to slaughterhouses near the farm with the meat exported.

But farmers are calling for a resumption of exporting live calves to France and Holland.

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