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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

Animals Australia seeks to bring livestock transporters to justice

 

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY--Ob-taining Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service reports on five 2006 shipments of live sheep and cattle to the Middle East through the national Freedom of Information Act, Animals Australia on August 22 charged two shippers with violating the Western Australia Animal Welfare Act.

Animals Australia executive director Glynis Oogjes warned that live exports from Tasmania might "be a potential breach of the Tasmanian Animal Welfare Act," and asked the Australian Government to prosecute live exporters for "numerous examples of breaches of the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock," documented by the AQIS reports.

"We provided the material to the Melbourne Age, and it is in the paper," Oogjes e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE. "Full details of the high mortality shipments are now available on the Animals Australia website," Oogjes added.

"The AQIS reports on the two worst incidents--the deaths of 1,683 sheep during a shipment from Tasmania to the Middle East in February 2006, and 247 cattle enroute to the Middle East in October 2006--reveal non-compliance with live export standards," Oogjes alleged.

Winning access to the AQIS reports required a struggle that was in itself newsworthy, wrote Sydney Morning Herald freedom-of-information editor Matthew Moore.

"It's four years since the Common-wealth Government held an inquiry following the outcry that erupted when Saudi Arabia left 50,000 sheep stranded on a ship, claiming they were infected with scabby mouth," Moore recalled. "The report prompted by that voyage, called the Keniry Livestock Export Review, was one of several inquiries designed to improve the care of animals in Australia's lucrative livestock export industry.

"If you search the copy of the Keniry Review on the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry website," Moore continued, "you will see the word 'transparent' comes up nine times. Search for 'transparency' and you'll find six more mentions, many of them among the recommendations to the then Agriculture minister, Warren Truss."

However, Moore wrote, instead of practicing transparency, "AQIS originally estimated it would cost $2156 to provide the documents that Animal Australia sought. Six months of negotiating brought the price down and finally produced the seven-page report that Animals Australia sought from the outset."

An AQIS-accredited veterinarian described bulls becoming lame after just four days at sea. "Prolonged recumbency and relative difficulty arising on the abrasive flooring [of the ships' decks] can cause skin damage which becomes infected because of the wet conditions," the vet summarized. "Once infected, the cattle spend an increased time recumbent. The cause of death is septicemia."

Other causes of transport death included a ship with 71,309 sheep and 320 cattle running low on feed, and goats dying of heat stress when a sailing was delayed by a credit dispute.

Halal is alternative

The most intensive coverage of Animals Australia's attempted prosecution of live transporters came from Lorna Edwards of the Melbourne Age, who had just concluded a series of articles exploring controversies over halal slaughter as practiced in Australia--the alternative to live shipment, if Australia is to keep Middle Eastern meat market share.

Australian animal advocates have argued for more than 30 years that the live export trade should be replaced by the export of frozen carcasses--but establishing the frozen carcass trade, now rapidly growing after a slow start, has required demonstrating to skeptical Middle Eastern buyers that Australian slaughterhouses are capable of killing animals by the halal method required by literal interpretations of Islam.

Done with a knife, halal slaughter is similar to kosher slaughter, required to ship frozen carcasses to Israel. Traditionally, pre-stunning is not allowed in either halal or kosher slaughter.

"The Australian standard for religious slaughter, which varies from traditional practice, requires sheep to be stunned with an electric charge immediately before their throats are cut for halal meat, and immediately after for kosher meat," Edwards explained on August 3, 2007. "Some Middle Eastern markets will not accept meat unless it is slaughtered using the traditional method."

The issue arose when Royal SPCA president Hugh Wirth asked the Victorian Department of Primary Industries to investigate the practices of Midfield Meats in Warrnambool to see if the company's methods violate the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Australian agriculture minister Peter McGauran announced a review of the ritual slaughter regulations after learning that Midfield Meats and three slaughterhouses in Victoria state, located at Kyneton, Carrum and Geelong, have operated without pre-stunning for as long as 18 years, through special agreements with inspectors.

The four companies together kill about 50,000 sheep per year, less than 3% of the total Australian mutton trade.

Fletcher International Exports owner Roger Fletcher, whose firm sells halal meat to 95 nations, told Edwards that slaughtering without electrical stunning "is undesirable not only because of animal cruelty issues, but because it slows productivity and creates workplace health and safety concerns."

The three Fletcher slaughterhouses kill up to 90,000 sheep and lambs a week.