Australia claims to have the best regulated live animal export trade in the world. But regulation is one thing, and enforcement is entirely another. The trade is supposedly regulated by the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock, and all available evidence indicates that while these industry-developed standards exist, they are largely unenforceable, unenforced, and barely provide these animals with any protection while they are still in Australia, much less when they leave Australian waters.
The Standards are monitored by AQIS, the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, and this is how well it is done.
Animals Angels frequently attends loadings in Fremantle. They state that there are routinely no government inspectors present at the wharf to deal with transport mismanagement such as overloading, ill and injured animals arriving for export, and cruelty such as beating and throwing the animals and the overuse and inappropriate use of electric prod devices.
These are some examples cited by Animals Angels
.
On Sunday 01.06.2008, they had to call an AQIS inspector. Likewise on 3 Apr 2008, 25 Mar 2008, and 21 Dec 2007, when they actually have to call AQIS to attend. AQIS arrives, but does no inspections.
A review of the AQIS mortality reports that Animals Australia was able to obtain under Freedom of Information provisions indicates that in almost all cases, the animals are not given the mandated periods in "registered premises" (feedlots) to accustom them to pelletized fodder. In November 2006 on the "Maysora", more than 450 cattle died either on the ship or on arrival in Tzofar; these cattle were southern bred cattle loaded in contravention of the ASEL. Heat exhaustion, pneumonia, septicaemia were the causes of death reported. On a voyage from Tasmania in 2006 on the aging "Al Messilah", a former car transporter, ill and injured sheep were loaded, the animals only had a matter of hours in the feedlot and there was not enough feed on the ship for the journey. 1,632 died on the ship, from starvation, heat exhaustion and trauma.
The industry then would have us believe that it can influence the way animals are treated in importing countries. Please visit the link below to see how successful they are.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1_BOAF7qvk
Further information attesting to this filmed by Animals Australia is at its
Live Export Indefensible website (www.liveexport-indefensible.com)
Now the Australian government (Rudd, the man who "cannot abide cruelty") is resuming the trade in cattle to Egypt. Most of the countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, to which Australia exports animals are signatories to (minimal) OIE (International Organization for Animal Health) animal welfare standards. You be the judge of their compliance.
No Memorandum of Understanding Australia has signed with any of these countries is legally enforceable, none has been tested, and they only provide for the animals to be offloaded from the ships in the event of a "dispute". They were developed to avert another public relations disaster like the 2003 "Cormo Express" tragedy, when 55,000 sheep were rejected by Saudi Arabia, and drifted around the Gulf for more than three months before Eritrea was persuaded to accept them. Representatives from Compassion in World Farming in Eritrea at the time claimed that only about 40,000 sheep were alive to be unloaded in Eritrea and left to a largely unkown fate. The "Cormo Express" was re-named the "Merino Express" very soon afterwards.
While the industry can claim that mortality rates on board the ships have improved, over 2 million animals have died on these voyages in recent years. The industry also claims that it can "improve" handling and slaughter practices in these countries where animal protection laws are non-existent. It is using your tax dollars in its token efforts to do so, and these wholly unsuccessful efforts are only in response to the massive public exposure on reputable documentary programs of the appalling brutality these animals face. Consider the human rights records of these countries. What hope do animals have? The images that remain in my mind are of cattle having their leg tendons slashed and eyes stabbed before being hacked to death, and the bull, hit so hard over the head with a metal bar that he was on his knees trembling - before the film was cut off. Sheep are thrown by ears and legs, and thrown into car boots or onto roofracks with their legs hobbled. They are dragged to slaughter by often broken legs, and their throats hacked at until they finally bleed to death, fully conscious.
This cruelty is outlawed in Australia, and it is unconscionable for the Australian government to allow animals to be treated like this half way across the world. Please remember, turning away from these hapless animals - saying "I can't look at this" - is abandoning these millions of animals, and telling the government that you find this disgraceful trade - and the fact that you are helping to fund it - acceptable.
See also: Live exports - a litany of disasters of 1 Sep 08 by Jenny Hume on WebDiary.
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Quick, sick dollars
And we are intensifying domestic animal farming here in Australia, with new laws passed to make it worse for pigs. And with spurious notions of efficiency pushing for feedlot farming and the quick, sick dollar.
Australia's economy is out of control in more ways than one.
Good writing, Stoptac. Keep it up. We are a wussy lot and have to start coping with the truth.
Daisy U
Live exports shows low animal welfare standards
So many local jobs are being lost due to not exporting frozen meat. Australia's reputation is being degraded by allowing ánimal cruelty.
The "collateral damage" of live exports
The mortality statistics for 2007, for animals who died at loading, on ships, or during "discharge" are available at LiveCorp's website. At the DAFF Animal Welfare/Live Exports site, the true "collateral damage" is revealed: a rise in mortality rates for sheep and goats; and the total "damage" for the year 2007 was more than 38,000 animals (despite an overall drop in sheep exports). Emanuel Exports, who faced cruelty charges in Western Australia this year was responsible for the deaths of about 4,500 sheep in just four voyages between June and December, a six month period. These people still have a licence, and no sanctions were ever imposed. Another exporter managed to kill 12.5% of the goats on board - but was able to continue exporting other animals.
This is, of course, the story of the "lucky" ones. The survivors face the most egregious cruelty to have been shown on Australian television. Furthermore, Middle Eastern countries are now "onforwarding" Australian animals to other countries, in conditions of unspeakable cruelty.
Who is laughing all the way to the bank? The exporters, and the importing countries, in which all the jobs have been created.
The Australian government now says it is investing funds in importing countries. This we have seen before, with facilities funded substantially by Australian taxpayers to prop up this obscene trade in cruelty not even being used.
If you believe this is unacceptable - that Australian animals destined for food deserve at the very least a humane life and a humane death, TAKE ACTION with the politicians who are actively supporting this trade in wretched animal misery.
Export of live sheep from Tasmania
Submitted to the Hobart Mercury, the Examiner (Launceston) and the Advocate (NW Tasmania)
Dear Editor
The last direct shipment of Tasmanian sheep left Devonport in February 2006, amid a storm of angry protest.
71,309 sheep, many ill and injured, were loaded onto the aging "Al Messilah", a former car transporter, and 1,632 died on the ship during the marathon 27 day journey. A report by the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) identified that a major cause of the mortalities was the fact that Tasmanian sheep are particularly poorly adapted to the heat exhaustion they suffer on lengthy, cross-equatorial journeys, along with disease, other trauma and starvation.
This was not, however, the end of the live export trade in Tasmanian sheep (or cattle). They are now shipped and trucked to Portland in Victoria, and exported from there, although this does not appear on LiveCorp's "State of Origin" statistics.
Enquiries to the Minister for Primary Industries, David Llewellyn, have elicted the extraordinary response that the Department doesn't actually know how many animals are involved, but he thinks it may be "possibly 15,000 to 20,000 in 2007 - 2008".
Why does his Department not know, for Heavens sake?
We have pointed out that if Tasmanian sheep cannot cope with a direct journey from Devonport, they arguably suffer far, far more with added journey from farm in Tasmania all the way to Portland, and all before being loaded on to live export ships.
Mr Llewellyn is "awaiting advice" on this. So are we.
STOP TASMANIAN ANIMAL CRUELTY
PO Box 252
BRIDGEWATER TAS 7030
Handle With Care
There is no doubt this is pure Evil and to think John Howard and now Rudd has turned their backs on it again is a sad reflection of our own worth because we voted them in.
However given the fact people have now been protesting for twenty pluss years- I am just wondering where is a plan- a project to phaze out this barbaric process.
HWC was launched- Um yes. What is it?
No I mean, what is the Handle with care all about. More pictures- more letters encouraged to be written to these same people that have turned their backs for years.
More funds raised- But to do what? Come on guys where is the plan?
What is the plan- other than show these pictures and ask for more funds?
I just dont get it. Why not employ some farmers x farmers. Get out in the bush and open some Aussie Abattoirs. Go and buy up stock and arrange to contract slaughter exporting carcuss only.
Or dont do that.
So what ARE you all doing? What is Handle With Care all about.
It would apprear just more hipe and hoohay+ fund raising...
Blissful ignorance
Animal cruelty is one of the worst forms of immorality. Animals have no say and are complete victims of their human masters.
If one was lucky enough to have received a golden executive parachute and somehow preserved one's super against the GFC Mark I, then a selfish person may consider 'social' and 'environmental' priorities matters for others.
Many in our community presume that if an ethical or social issue does not affect them directly, they can be morally justified in relegating them to the lot of noble charities. But charities don't just happen. Animal not-for-profit charities like WIRES and the RSPCA exist despite of government neglect of moral duty.
In my view, such selfishly disengaged members of our community deserve attracting higher tax premiums.
Few people experience such cruelty directly and so it is easy for them to ignore the issue as relevant or important to them. Many immoral issues fall into the same 'out-of sight-out-of-mind' category, including live sheep export well below animal welfare standards.
Once again, rural Australians choosing to lower themselves to profiteering from live sheep trading to Saudia Arabia, Egypt and Eritrea simply forgo ethical principles, as if so desperate that the lure of a quick buck from animal exploitation is ingrained like a colonial cultural contagion.
Pragmatically, many justify that they are too busy with their lives to take an interest outside their backyards in such issues. Blissful ignorance of social and ethical issues is the norm of the maintream. Busy parents and primary and secondary schools still don't teach life issues of morality or ethics at a child's impressionable age.
Why?
Contributors to this website that simply mud sling do nothing to add to the exploring the issue at hand. If 'Anonymous' contributers do so, I recommend their input be deleted as trash. They only demean this website. They may find more joy contributing to Ralph magazine.