Australian livestock trade

 Background

Seven million live animals are exported from Australia each year to the Middle East, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Mexico. Sheep, cows, pigs, goats, camels and deer all face weeks at sea. Conditions on board are notoriously bad and totally inappropriate for live animals – some of the vessels are just converted car carriers! Up to 140,000 animals may be transported in one vessel. The Australian Government’s Department of Agriculture has admitted that approximately 100,000 sheep die on these ships each year, but this figure is almost certainly understated. There are several regular causes of death:

• Starvation – often the animals are so tightly packed together that the weaker or more timid animals cannot get to the food troughs during the voyage; moreover, animals are only offered dried food, which many will not eat because they are used to grazing



• Thirst – similarly only those animals closest to the water can drink



• Accidents – ship-board fires, leaks and ventilation failure have caused the death of numerous animals



• Disease – salmonellosis and respiratory diseases are commonplace on these ships. The animals’ pens are not cleaned during the whole voyage, so by the end they are standing a foot-deep in their own urine and faeces, breathing in ammonia fumes, which can cause both blindness and respiratory failure.



• Heat exhaustion – animals are regularly shipped in temperatures of up to 40ºC.

 Those that do not die suffer horribly. Often, during the overland journey across Australia to their port of departure (which can mean up to four days in a truck), animals suffer broken limbs and other injuries, but, despite rules to the contrary, are loaded on to the ships. And of course, during the voyage itself, animals undergo week after week of pain and fear – all too frequently, animals that begin their voyage in perfect health reach their slaughter destination starving, thirsty, injured and blind.

The death toll

Research has shown that the death rate is absurdly high, so much so that mortality is routinely allowed for in the initial calculations of profit margins. The following are just some of the incidents documented.

• In 1980, the Farid Fares caught fire and sank while en route from Australia to the Middle East, killing all 40,605 sheep on board. In the same year, disease killed 2,713 sheep on the Kahleej Express.



• In 1981, 635 sheep died during transfer from the Kahleej Express to the A1 Shuuwaikh, and 8,764 sheep perished on board the Persia due to ventilation breakdown.



• In 1985, 15,000 sheep died (mainly from heat exhaustion) on the Fernanda F while it was en route from Australia to the Middle East.



• In 1990, 10,000 sheep died from suffocation and over-heating on the way from New Zealand to Saudi Arabia on the Cormo Express.  



• 67,488 sheep died when the Uniceb caught fire en route from Australia to Jordan in August 1996. The animals were either burned alive or died from smoke asphyxiation or from drowning.



• In 1998 154 cattle and 283 goats died after a financial dispute delayed unloading of the Anomis in Malaysia; 346 cattle died on the Charolais Express en route to the Middle East; 50 cattle died while in port in Jordan and a further 174 injured or ill cattle were rejected on arrival in the Middle East. These animals were apparently killed and disposed of at sea on the return journey.



• In January 1999, 800 cattle (about 80% of the total cargo!) suffocated on a ship bound from Darwin to Indonesia, and the carcases were thrown overboard.



• In July 2002, 900 cattle died on the maiden voyage of the Becrux, a ship initially praised for its improved hygiene and ventilation.



• In October 2002, more than 2,300 sheep died en route from Portland, Australia to the Middle East on the Al Shuwaikh, before the ship had even left Australian waters.

(Source: Animals Australia and Compassion in World Farming)

These are just a few of the incidents that have been recorded. The sad truth is that this reflects just a small part of the overall death toll.

The Cormo Express fiasco

In 2003, people around the world looked on with disbelief, horror and disgust as the story of the Cormo Express unfolded.

The story began on August 6, when some 57,000 sheep were loaded onto the Dutch-owned MV Cormo Express at Fremantle bound for Saudi Arabia. When the ship reached Jeddah, on August 20, the whole shipment was rejected by the Saudi authorities due to scabby mouth disease. The exporters and the Australian Government began to look around for an alternative destination for the animals, but first Pakistan, then the United Arab Emirates, then country after country rejected the shipment because of the animals’ diseased condition.

In the meantime, the sheep remained on board, standing in their own faeces, enduring temperatures of around 40ºC, poor food and limited supplies of water. As if this wasn’t enough, reprovisioning for the animals in Kuwait was delayed on October 6 when a fire broke out destroying two tonnes of feed. ABC News Online quoted Australia’s chief vet, Dr Gardner Murray, as commenting ‘The material was very combustible and, with the heat and the movement of chaff through the air, it can self-ignite.’ It is unclear whether any sheep were killed or injured during the fire, but Dr Murray’s comment underlines the gruesome absurdity of this repulsive trade.

It wasn’t until October 24 that the Cormo sheep finally found a destination. After some 30 countries had rejected the sheep, the Australian Government cynically offered the sick and dying cargo as a ‘gift’ to famine-stricken Eritrea. It took a starving people to accept the sheep that had become so diseased that no one wanted them. When the cargo was finally unloaded in Massawa, workers had to cover their noses and mouths to avoid the stench from what the Australian media had by now dubbed the ‘Ship of Death’. Around 5,800 sheep had died on the voyage.

During the eleven weeks the Cormo was at sea, outrage at the Government’s callous attitude grew among the Australian people. And it wasn’t just the animal welfare groups who were angered – ordinary people, farmers, workers in the meat industry all voiced their anger and contempt as the story was covered by television, magazines and newspapers. As the horrific story was relayed globally, people around the world began to revise their opinion of a country that had long had the reputation of being fair-minded and compassionate – as far as humane standards are concerned, the Australian Government and its cruel live export trade had together turned this lovely land into a Third World nation.

Predictably the Australian Government did all it could to play down the disaster. Australian Agriculture Minister issued a press release on 22 September 2003 maintaining that the sheep were in good health, quoting the veterinary officer on the Cormo as saying: ‘The sheep consignment is maintaining its excellent condition and there are no health issues affecting the sheep. It is estimated that the entire sheep consignment has gained 2kg to 3kg per head in body weight during the voyage.’ However, how much credence should we give this comment, given the testimony of vet Dr Tony Hill on the 60 Minutes programme about Australian live export? This begs the question of how they can possibly tell the weight of these sheep when they are packed into pens on a ship – unless, of course they are including the ever-increasing weight of faeces that the animals are standing in.

Furthermore, a few days later, when Australia was considering bringing the animals back to Fremantle, there was grave concern about a quarantine risk from these ‘healthy’ sheep. Former chief vet of Australia, Bill Gee, described the proposal as ‘absolute madness’ as the sheep would have been exposed to diseases such as ‘screw worm fly, Rift Valley fever and blue tongue.’ ABC online quoted him on 3 October as saying, ‘To have those sheep come back into an Australian point-port is absolutely dicing with death, because as soon as they get into a port, they’re likely to be attacked by Australian insects which would then have the chance of transmitting really serious diseases to Australian livestock.’

The Cormo sheep are now long dead, but their suffering has highlighted a trade that is outmoded, inefficient, obscene and immoral.

Why does this trade continue?

Animal welfarists have repeatedly called for the trade to be banned in grounds of its inhumanity, asking that it be replaced by a chilled and frozen meat trade. The main argument used to refuse this request is it would contravene Islamic law, making the meat unacceptable to the vast majority of the industry’s Muslim importing countries – the meat would not be ‘halal’. Halal is Arabic for lawful or permitted and is used to describe the food that conforms to Islamic dietary law. Islamic law includes a number of rules that are designed to minimise the suffering and ensure the dignity of animals before they die. For instance:

• Animals should not be cruelly transported or handled



• Animals should not be slaughtered in the presence of another animal



• Animals should be slaughtered quickly and professionally

The Australian exporters ignore these rules as a matter of course, making a nonsense of their argument. There are, in fact, abattoirs in Australia that are fully accredited for halal slaughter, but allowing for the animal to be stunned prior to death, thus reducing the amount of suffering. Moreover, during the 1990s, when Saudi Arabia rejected Australian sheep on the grounds of disease, it was willing to accept frozen and chilled meat instead. The Australian authorities often argue that the Middle East countries do not have refrigeration; this is just not true.

Blaming Islamic law for the continuation of this vile trade simply does not work!

The truth is that this trade is highly lucrative for the exporters and is supported by the Australian Government, despite reports from the Australian Meatworkers’ Union stating that the trade has cost them over 12,000 jobs. However, the trade does generate revenue for the Government in terms of tax. Moreover, many of the top figures in the industry are supporters of the Australian Liberals…. which just happens to be the party in power at the moment.

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