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14 October 2007

Exporting Livestock

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The Livestock ship Cormo Express lies off Kuwait in 2003

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Conditions have improved for the cattle, sheep, and goats Australia sends overseas for slaughter in other countries, but animal welfare groups have continued to keep a close eye on shipments. Recent FOI documents reveal more disturbing facts about the deaths and distress of animals on long journeys. Meanwhile halal abattoirs in Australia are booming, and can't fulfil the demand from Islamic countries for processed halal meat. Reporter: Erica Vowles.

Please note: the picture gallery contains images that some people may find distressing.

Transcript


Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

THEME

Erica Vowles: Few Australians will have forgotten the horrors of the Cormo Express four years ago. 57,000 sheep were stranded at sea for months, while authorities quarrelled. Again this week on The 7:30 Report, Australia saw new evidence of cruel practices in that trade.

Leigh Sales: The video's been given exclusively to The 7:30 Report and we must warn it does show images that might be quite distressing for some viewers. Mike Sexton reports.

Mike Sexton: On the outskirts of Amman, Jordan, animal activist Lyn White is experiencing her own version of hell on earth. All around her is the sight, sound and smell of animals being prepared for slaughter.

Erica Vowles: The 7:30 Report showed that abuse of Australian animals in the Middle East is continuing. The Agriculture Minister, Peter McGauran has labelled the acts as isolated incidents of cruelty. But these revelations are part of a bigger story. Background Briefing has followed up on FOI documents obtained by the animal welfare group, Animals Australia, which show there are still unacceptable conditions for cattle, sheep and goats during the shipping. This is a reading from one of the FOI documents, a report revealed by the group, Animals Australia.

Reader: Heat stress was apparent from Day Two with elevated respiratory rates, mouth breathing, increased saliva and water intake. Heavier cattle were more severely affected. Decks became slippery with urine, faeces and saliva, increasing the number of traumatic injuries due to cattle going down.

Erica Vowles: Those behind the live export industry say they themselves haven't had much information. The revelations in the FOI documents came as a surprise.

Scott Hansen: The industry hasn't been privy to those reports, in fact the first of those that we saw were courtesy of the Animals Australia website.

Erica Vowles: You're listening to ABC Radio National. I'm Erica Vowles.

The 7:30 Report showed footage taken in Middle Eastern countries, such as Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, after animals had been landed. Today Background Briefing delves further into what has been happening over the past few years in the live animal trade.

After the Cormo Express controversy there was an inquiry, the Keniry Review. It called for new standards to govern how animals are transported from Australia for slaughter overseas, and things have improved. Animal welfare groups like the RSPCA acknowledge this, but they say disturbing cases of neglect during transport are still coming to light. Former RSPCA President, Dr Hugh Wirth.

Hugh Wirth: Whilst on one hand you've got rid of the pirates, those who exported on a one-off basis, so that you reduce the number of exporters. On the other hand, we were hopeful that the standards, which needed to be enforced, would be enforced properly. This is where we've found the biggest failure.

Erica Vowles: Evidence of this can be found in one of the FOI documents obtained recently by Animals Australia. It shows that on a shipment of goats from Geraldton in Western Australia to Malaysia, up to five of the new standards may have been breached, including one that says only fit and healthy animals can be exported and another that governs how long goats should be adapted to ship food before a long journey. This is a reading from that report.

Reader: The problem of compromised health was compounded by changes in feed ration and delays in transport, which caused the high number of deaths.

Erica Vowles: Australia is the world's largest exporter of live animals and has the best regulations in the world. But there's been a competition between the live exporters and those people and regional communities who rely on abattoir work in Australia, and the animal welfare groups have been keeping a keen eye.

Nearly 170 abattoirs have closed in Australia in the last three decades. At the same time, shipments of live animals have increased. New regulations include the stipulation that the Australian parliament now has to be informed about the overall mortality rates for the trade.

Earlier this year, the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service had minimal information, showing briefly that there were five ships in 2006 that were investigated due to the high number of deaths on board.

For six months Animals Australia sought more details. When the FOI documents finally arrived, Animals Australia CEO, Glenys Oogjes was horrified. Here she talks about one lot of nearly 8,000 cattle on a ship that sailed from Portland and Fremantle to the Middle East in October 2006. More than 3% died.

Glenys Oogjes: It seems a number of things were going on and obviously septicaemia, and this occurred in some of the Friesian bulls, the large bulls; they have difficulty because of the very abrasive floor, and they were getting injuries, scraping injuries that were then infected. It seems that there was urine and faeces and a wet floor, and because they were laying down quite a bit, and we're not sure why that is, but they certainly had a capacity for injury and then infections. Septicaemia killed very many of them. And I think a real tragedy of this journey is that the AQIS report also indicates that only 30 or 40 of the 247 cattle that died, only 30 or 40 of them were actually euthanased. So the others died from their injuries or their illnesses, pneumonia as well.

Erica Vowles: It's unavoidable that every year some animals die on board ships, even in the best circumstances. For example, each year over 4-million sheep are shipped overseas, in 2006, 36,000 sheep died on those journeys. This average death toll represents just under 1% of animals exported. But Animals Australia say even these deaths, often slow and painful, can be avoided if all Australian animals are simply slaughtered here, and exported as meat.

But such sentiments aren't shared by those involved in the live trade, who point out that the vast majority of animals arrive at the other end in good condition. They are also all too aware that any negative publicity, such as The 7:30 Report this week, threatens the trade.

Meat and Livestock Australia is a body funded by farmers and Livecorp represents the live trader, and they have been preparing for controversies such as this. In July this year they put out a report setting out the value of live exports to Australia's economy. There'll be a link to that report, and others mentioned in today's program, on the Background Briefing website.

General Manager of Livestock Exports at Meat and Livestock Australia, is Scott Hansen.

Scott Hansen: The report that we had commissioned found that the industry was worth about $830-million to regional communities, employed about 11,000 people in those communities. And it's not just the producers involved in the production of the livestock, but the people who are involved in the transporting of the livestock and the production of stock feed, veterinarians, ancillary support services within those communities, and really just re-emphasise the fact that it is an important part of many rural and regional communities' infrastructure and social fabric.

Erica Vowles: Scott Hansen acknowledges that the local abattoir industries also contribute to local communities in the form of jobs, and that the export of chilled meat earns good export money for Australia.

Animals Australia say animals will have better treatment if they are killed close to where they pasture. In contrast, being transported and shipped for days is cruel. Glenys Oogjes.

Glenys Oogjes: They'll be given unfamiliar food that is going from grazing to having to feed on pelleted food. Some of the sheep don't eat it, and that's a major cause of suffering and death on board ships, and at the other end. And then they are again crowded onto a ship; in the case of sheep again, three sheep to each square metre.

Erica Vowles: Glenys Oogjes also says that Australia has little control over what happens to animals when they are unloaded in foreign countries. But the people involved in the many steps it takes to get animals off the paddock, into trucks, and onto ships and offloaded in foreign countries, say the trade is constantly improving its standards, and emphasise there are far fewer deaths on that journey now.

Australian livestock for slaughter and for breeding end up all over the world, in countries like Russia, the Philippines, and Japan. Live cattle are sent primarily to Indonesia and other South East Asian countries. Sheep go mainly to the Middle East. While the Middle East is increasingly importing meat that has been killed and processed in Australia, some countries in that part of the world still only want live animals, which they will slaughter themselves in the halal way.

Animal welfare groups argue that neglect on board ships, and cruelty in countries where the animals are landed, can be avoided. Already, for example, halal slaughtering is being done in Australia.

Many abattoirs here are providing halal meat for Muslims in Australia as well as exporting it to Islamic countries. Some abattoirs are overseen by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, or AFIC.

AFIC takes a very strict approach to halal slaughtering, and says that in true Islamic teaching, cruelty to animals is wrong.

It's Saturday in Zetland in Sydney, and Mohamed Rahman is busy at work, co-ordinating AFIC's halal program. He says there is a huge demand throughout the Muslim world for Australian meat processed in the halal way, and there should soon be no need to send over live animals. To meet that demand he overseas the certification of up to 100 halal abattoirs in Australia. This work takes him all over the country.

Mohamed Rahman: I've got a lot of inspections coming up, auditing the plants, under the Australian government Muslim slaughter program.

Erica Vowles: And you're off to Charleville?

Mohamed Rahman: Yes, off to Charleville maybe tomorrow morning, early morning. Takes me 14 hours drive. Some of the Malaysians are visiting us, our abattoirs, to get approved, so that we can send meat to Malaysia.

Erica Vowles: The Arabic word 'halal' means what is 'permissible'. In the diet of a Muslim there are some animals that are halal and some that are haram, which means they are forbidden for Muslims to eat. Pork is haram.

In pure Islamic teachings, an animal is only halal if it has eaten nothing but vegetables, and is healthy and strong. It must not have been killed for sport or accidentally. It must not suffer, and crucially it must be blessed before it dies, and all the blood must be drained from its body immediately.

AFIC has a policy of working towards decreasing the number of animals sent overseas live, and increasing the number killed here, according to halal.

Mohamed Rahman: In Islam, animal welfare is top priority. You can't show a knife, sharp knife to the animal. If you show the knife to the animal, that's you're killing it twice. Because it's conscious, they're called consciousness. They've got their own communities, so if you do the livestock, it has to be done in a humane way. Not just, you know I mean if you travel, we don't travel in a hot condition, so why should the animals be? So if the conditions are right, why not, but it's preferable that if you don't do it the right way, don't do it.

Erica Vowles: So does that mean that AFIC is opposed to livestock exports?

Mohamed Rahman: It's not opposed, it's not preferable for us to export livestock for various reasons. One of them is animal welfare, and the other one is keeping the jobs in Australia.

Erica Vowles: So talking about the welfare of animals arriving in the Middle East, there have been some concerns about practices of some slaughterhouses in the Middle East, of some fairly inhumane slaughtering practices. What does the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils think about this?

Mohamed Rahman: We condemn that. All the Muslims in the world condemn that. The matter of fact is, it is haram, it is prohibited to torture an animal before you slaughter it halal. If you slash a tendon on the foot of an animal, that animal automatically becomes haram. That means that meat is haram to be consumed, because you tortured that animal. We were very hurt, we were very concerned about it, we condemned it.

Erica Vowles: A problem emerged some years ago when some abattoirs were labelling meat as halal when it was not. News of this got to various Islamic countries, and some stopped buying Australian meat. Now AFIC is working closely with AQIS to ensure that halal abattoirs are following the rules.

Mohamed Rahman: What happened in the past was there were people who were issuing certificates through laptops, so that will tell you. But now it's changed because AQIS is coming down very hard on them. There are regulations, that if somebody does something like that they will be penalised and they will be deregistered if need be. So it was in the past, but times are changing. So AFIC is very actively involved in not being a hypocrite, because we say we're trying to do halal and we have to do halal. We can't just say we're doing halal and we don't do halal, you see?

Erica Vowles: Mohamed Rahman says confidence in Australian halal meat is now returning, and soon most live exports will not be necessary.

Mohamed Rahman: It is possible it's going to happen, as soon as they get the confidence back, it is going to happen. And it's just a matter of time. Saudi has come back with some other new plan that people are audited by, they are actively involved now, so that's very good. When Saudis are involved, when Malaysia's involved, when Brunei's involved, when Singapore's involved, if Indonesia is involved, that means the confidence is coming back in Australia. We can't cater for the demand that they've got for halal. There is so much demand there, which will outrun the supply. We are exporting frozen product, we are exporting chilled product by air and by sea.

Erica Vowles: But Mohamed Rahman concedes that some countries prefer their own slaughter practices.

Mohamed Rahman: Some countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, when they do the slaughtering of, sacrifice of animals, they want to do it their way, so that's why the get that livestock. But I think in the future it's viable for them and good for us, that everything is slaughtered in Australia and then we have more jobs created for Australians, and we want to keep the jobs here, we want to keep the money here.

Erica Vowles: To see for ourselves, Background Briefing went to Dubbo in New South Wales, which has the largest halal sheep abattoir in Australia, run by Fletcher International.

How are you going? I'm Erica Vowles from Radio National. I'm here to see Roger Fletcher.

Abattoir worker: No worries I'll just get you to sign in here.

Erica Vowles: About 700 people are employed here, and in Western Australia, in Albany, the same company employs about 600 people, with spin-on effects for the whole community.

Erica Vowles: Roger, Erica, nice to meet you.

Roger Fletcher: Sorry we are running a bit late, I'm just going to pinch a cup of coffee ...

Erica Vowles: Cup of coffee sounds great.

Erica Vowles: Roger says all the meat produced in both plants is halal.

Roger Fletcher: We kill all our sheep halal, and most of the sheep at export plants in Australia are all halal plants, because it's a good system. The meat's all covered that way. You know, we go into a lot of destinations around the world that require halal meat and that includes like England, Japan, Germany, America, Canada, we've got customers right through the world. Because we cut the animal up into many pieces, it's all halal and it can go then to any market we like.

Erica Vowles: Donning a cap and a white coat, Background Briefing is shown around the abattoir. It's noisy, smelly, and very confronting.

It's not pleasant to see the last moments of these sheep as they are electronically stunned and then passed down on a conveyer belt to the halal slaughterman.

Akl Taleb: Arabic blessing of sheep 'Bish me lal al akbah'

Erica Vowles: Where each animal has its throat cut in one fast slash, by a Lebanese Muslim, Akl Taleb. There is a gush of hot blood.

The words he says as he makes each swift and strong cut translate to 'In the name of God the Great'.

Akl Taleb does this for about one hour at a time, and may slaughter as many as 10,000 sheep a week. There are four Muslim men doing this work here.

Akl Taleb's job means he is responsible for checking the sheep for any signs of illness or imperfection.

Akl Taleb: Some of them, they don't just bleed, or they look very, very weak, so I've got a tag in my pocket saying Not Halal on it, so I put a tag on it. Yeah go not halal.

Erica Vowles: So that's all vetted by you?

Akl Taleb: Yes.

Erica Vowles: So someone eating this in Jordan or Saudi Arabia knows that it's been vetted.

Akl Taleb: Yes, it's a big responsibility on me, so I'm very responsible up here to make sure everything's halal and good for eating by Muslims and stuff like that.

Erica Vowles: Further down the conveyer belt other abattoir workers begin the process of skinning, beheading, dismembering and carving up the animals into smaller pieces. They are then boxed and shipped off across the world.

The head of Fletcher International is Roger Fletcher. Originally a drover from the New England town of Glen Innes, he is now the biggest sheepmeat processor in Australia. Roger Fletcher says animal welfare has become an important part of his business, and he takes it very seriously.

Roger Fletcher: Well when I come to the end of the day I'd like to die as good as the sheep do, and I can't say any better, because we've done a lot of research on it and we're not knocking the animals about, and you can't do better than what we are doing.

Erica Vowles: Roger says the demand for halal meat processed in Australia and shipped to the Middle East and the rest of the world, continues to grow.

Roger Fletcher: We're putting meat into every country in the Middle East. We've had no cut-off from anywhere, and we've developed those markets; we're into all the - we go onto the ships to the work camps, to the best supermarkets, to the best hotels, we're supplying meat today. And it's accepted by all Muslims that are over there, we've had no issues, we work closely with those Middle Eastern governments, and I think it's a sensible way to go. There is a fallacy out there that they don't have fridges and they don't have the proper shops.

Erica Vowles: How do you respond then to the claims that are often made by the live industry that these markets don't want chilled meat, they want freshly slaughtered meat by their own Muslim halal slaughterers.

Roger Fletcher: Well anyone can put that stuff out. They might be right, they might be wrong, but time will tell. The population's changing too in the Middle East. People have got to understand that the younger generation don't slaughter their own animals so much, they're softer, and times are changing, they're getting more westernised.

Erica Vowles: Australia's export of processed meat to the Middle East is growing. Last year, sales of mutton and lamb, sheep meat, into the Middle East were worth $225 million, not much less than the live animal export trade.

The two sides of Australia's meat exports industry, the live animal exporters and those who export processed meat, each claim to be vital to Australia's economy. Abattoirs create local employment n many communities and the Australian Meat Industry Council says that 110,000 Australians are employed directly and indirectly in the sector. But the live export industry argues in its recent report that 11,000 people are employed as a result of their trade in rural communities as well.

But Roger Fletcher is critical of the July report by the live export people on the importance of their sector to the economy. He says their report didn't take into account the wider benefits to local communities that abattoirs provide.

Roger Fletcher: I'm not here to knock the live trade or the economics, but I think we do make a large economical return to Australia, more so than the live trade, because for instance, we contribute to the State governments a lot more payroll tax than they'll ever do. Our employees have all got superannuation, and that's protecting them for the years to come.

Erica Vowles: Welfare groups support local meat abattoirs. The RSPCA has a position that all animals should be slaughtered as close to where they were reared as possible. Dr Hugh Wirth.

Hugh Wirth: The RSPCA movement worldwide considers that the journey to the slaughterhouse, the abattoir, should be the shortest possible between farm gate and the abattoir, to avoid stress and therefore have a calm death.

Erica Vowles: Does that make the RSPCA opposed to live exports?

Hugh Wirth: No, not entirely. It's one factor. The problem that the RSPCA has with live exports that in the six stages of live export from selection on farm, to eventual killing at a slaughterhouse, there are structural problems with every one of those six stages. And that leads to cruelty.

Erica Vowles: Six new standards were introduced after the Keniry Review, and they cover all the stages of the export process, including the selection and preparation of the farm animals, the transport of animals to the holding pens, transport again to pens near the shipyards, loading onto the ships, and animal care during the sea voyage.

The Australian regulations cover all of these stages, and both State and Federal government agencies are responsible for enforcing the standards. But it's difficult to track down who is actually taking responsibility for each standard and who is actively enforcing them. Dr Hugh Wirth.

Hugh Wirth: The failure to enforce is now a systemic one. The first three standards that covers all that happens on farm, selection, preparation, and then to transport to shipside, are supposed to be enforced by State governments or Territory governments, and the fact of life is that none of them are doing this, and it's acknowledged that they're not enforcing the standards.

Erica Vowles: Hugh Wirth insists the regimes governing the welfare of live exported animals will not improve until a national approach is taken.

Hugh Wirth: Somewhere along the line, someone is going to have to come to the conclusion that it is farcical to have a nationwide problem being resolved by eight legal jurisdictions, plus the Commonwealth, which makes it nine, and there is no way at the moment where those legal systems can be unified.

Erica Vowles: A major focus for Animals Australia has been the fate that animals face once they reach their export destination and this week they released footage of incidents that were shown on The 7:30 Report.

Over the years, the group has highlighted many horrifying conditions in some of the destination countries, videoing confronting images, including cruelty in abattoirs, dehydrated and barely conscious animals with bloated tongues in feedlots and trucks, as well as carcasses in pens.

In December 2006, videos also revealed Australian sheep being dragged by their legs through the streets, being trussed up, panting, and thrown into the boots of cars in Egypt, and some awful images of cruelty to cattle there.

The revelations have had an effect. Earlier this year, Australia effectively ceased its trade of cattle and sheep to Egypt because of the cruel practices.

But fresh video footage now released show that unacceptable practices are widespread across the Middle East.

Meat and Livestock Australia, and Livecorp have known they are vulnerable on these issues, and in recent years money and staff have been invested in the region to mitigate some of the local handling problems.

Livecorp and MLA have one full-time staff member, and up to 10 contract staffers based in the Middle East, working on animal handling, and welfare issues. One of these contractors is Sharon Dundon, who works out of Bahrain. She says her work is attempting to educate locals about the difference between Australian sheep and Middle East sheep.

Sharon Dundon: The domestic Arabic sheep is very used to seeing people. They live raised with people constantly. On the other hand the Australian sheep, they come from vast, huge livestock properties, grazing properties, and quite often from when they leave the port in Australia and arrive here in the Middle East, they may have only seen people once or twice. So when they are actually unloaded off the ship here in the Middle East, they appear wild to the stockmen who are actually handling them. So we're starting to work with them and share our ideas to get them to understand why it is that our sheep behave differently.

Erica Vowles: Sharon is based in Bahrain with her husband Peter Dundan, MLA and Livecorp's Livestock Services Manager for the region. Together they travel all over the Middle East, inspecting ships, feedlots, ports, trucks, livestock markets and abattoirs, working with local stockmen, government officials and importers. This interview was done before this week's new video footage of practices in some Middle East countries. Sharon Dundon.

Sharon Dundon: So it's all about training the trainer, so training the veterinary officials, training the head stockman that are over here, that are constantly in charge, and also handling our sheep. So we have the resources that we've got, and we're trying to share our ideas and get more people on the ground here, within the Arabic culture and get them to start learning what we do and what we're trying to achieve so that they can keep training.

Erica Vowles: As recent footage has shown, all of this is just a band-aid solution says Animals Australia. Background Briefing spoke to Lyn White, who has conducted many of Animals Australia's investigations in the Middle East, including the latest one. She explains what she saw there.

Lyn White: Well once again in the four countries that we visited, we documented animals being treated inhumanely, quite often quite cruelly, and also just continual breaches of the OAE standards, which is the World Organisation for Animal Health, and these are guidelines that these countries are all signatories to. And the only way that we can encourage these countries to actually raise their standards to meet what are really quite basic OAE Standards, is that Australia refuses to export to them. These standards were meant to be the basis of bilateral trade agreements between countries, and Australia by continuing to supply animals to these countries is completely undermining the work of the OAE in the region.

Erica Vowles: So you travelled to a number of different countries in the region. Can you tell me about some of the incidents that you witnessed there?

Lyn White: In Kuwait we specifically returned there because we'd highlighted the poor treatment of Australian sheep at the main abattoir in Kuwait, which is Shuwaikh. Previously on two occasions, and as a result of the 2003 investigation Meat and Livestock Australia had held a four-day animal handling workshop in Kuwait, and so we were stunned to return there and find that the treatment of animals had actually deteriorated, that animals were being pulled backwards off trucks without loading ramps to fall on their backs, for animals still to be dragged fully up ramps, and animals suffering severe heat stress tied up in wheelbarrows and this is at an abattoir that we'd highlighted previously to the Federal government and industry which if ever there was an abattoir that should have been improved by their presence it was this one.

Erica Vowles: And I understand you also travelled to an abattoir in Oman?

Lyn White: In Oman, we had previously highlighted two abattoirs in reports to the Federal government, one of them just on the outskirts of Muscat we returned to which literally the truck backs up to the abattoir, and expects the animals to jump onto the slaughterhouse floor which is just cracked tiles, in a disgusting state, and as we'd previously highlighted this in a full report to government, we returned there, and not a single thing had changed, the animals were still being forced to jump from the back of the truck onto this broken slaughter floor, which causes them to slip and slide and of course suffer injuries apart from the distress that it causes.

Erica Vowles: While MLA and Livecorp have staff on the ground in the Middle East, Lyn White says that from her experience, they are unable to stop acts of cruelty.

Lyn White: Well I think that we have seen they've been there for well over 30 years and still we are documenting these appalling acts of cruelty, and for a start I fully believe that MLA staff in the region are good people, and well intentioned, but it's the industry that employs them that is the problem. And the message that this industry is prepared to send animals half way around the world only to be slaughtered, is conveying to local people. Let's face it, if they were truly teaching animal welfare properly, the first thing that their students would learn is that it's wrong to send animals half way around the world only to be slaughtered. Every animal protection organisation in the world opposes Australia's live export trade.

Erica Vowles: Alongside the release of video footage from their recent trip, Animals Australia also recently made public FOI documents on five high mortality shipments in 2006. These took many months to get, and Animals Australia say their attempts to get information have been stalled at each step by AQIS, one of the regulators of the industry.

Animals Australia were initially bemused that the AQIS website had only the flimsiest information. Glenys Oogjes.

Glenys Oogjes: When we did get the full reports, although it had the blacked-out ship names and exporters and such things, what we did find was the detail there indicated that at least in one of the five shipments, the causes of death that AQIS had noted on their website, didn't even include one of the primary reasons animals died, and one of the major issues there was septicaemia from wounds that the cattle had received on that shipment. That cause of death, which caused the death of quite a number of animals, was not even listed on the AQIS website.

Erica Vowles: The AQIS reports provided evidence that in all of the shipments, some of the Australian Standards may have been breached. While AQIS made recommendations to some of the exporters to change their shipment practices, to date there have been no charges laid.

Here's what the internal AQIS investigation revealed about a shipment of sheep and cattle that travelled from Tasmania's Devonport to Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar in February, 2006. It takes about inanition, which means exhaustion from starvation. This is a slightly edited version.

Reader: It appears that the high level of mortalities due to inanition were a consequence of a number of factors that combined together, resulted in an increase in the stress experienced by the sheep. These included a current disease, the outbreak of infectious keratoconjunctivitis, 'pink-eye', and lack of acclimatisation, sheep sourced from Tasmania are not adapted to adverse climatic conditions experienced on a livestock vessel crossing the equator.

Erica Vowles: Glenys Oogjes believes that in this shipment, several of the livestock standards may have been breached.

Glenys Oogjes: In the AQIS report it's indicated that there was a delay in treating the sheep that had pink-eye and other problems, because the staff, the crew on board, were not able to because they were dealing with the sick cattle. In other words, there just were not sufficient resources. So that's a problem in itself because the standards indicate there must be sufficient resources. But secondly of course that also means that the standard whereby animals must identified and inspected twice a day, identified as ill, and then immediately treated, promptly treated, and euthanased if necessary. Now of course, that wasn't happening clearly through the AQIS report it indicates there was not enough staff.

Erica Vowles: One of the reports also states that on a shipment from Portland and Fremantle to Israel, Jordan and Egypt in October 2006, the ship's abrasive flooring caused leg wounds in the cattle. This caused at least 146 of the cattle to die from septicaemia. At least 56 of the cattle died from pneumonia.

Here's an edited reading from the AQIS investigation report into that journey.

Reader: Lameness in the Friesian cattle was a significant problem from early in the voyage. The cattle were treated with antibiotics and anti-imflammatories with variable response. The veterinarian considered that the floors were 'sloppy' for the voyage.

The report concluded that a combination of prolonged recumbency and relative difficulty rising from the abrasive flooring can cause skin damage, which becomes infected because of the wetter than normal conditions. Once infected, the cattle spend an increased time recumbent and the cause of death is septicaemia.

Erica Vowles: This particular shipment of cattle appears to have had problems after it reached Israel as well. Background Briefing has spoken with an Israeli animal activist, Yossi Wolfson, who sent over photographs he took after the cattle landed where many died while in quarantine. These photos will be available on the Background Briefing website.

Yossi Wolfson estimates that 250 cattle died shortly after they got off this shipment. But Background Briefing has been unable to verify this number. The Israeli Veterinary Service has sent a report to AQIS in Australia, detailing the causes of the deaths and the number, but the Israeli Veterinary Service refused to discuss their report, and told Background Briefing to take it up with the Australian authorities. Background Briefing attempted to get an on-the-record interview with AQIS about this and other issues, but they did not make anyone available. The Israeli report has not been released, and Animals Australia has made a Freedom of Information request for the document. If the numbers stated are true, that would mean that a total of 500 cattle died on or shortly after this voyage, making the mortality rate five times the rate that triggers an investigation.

The Australian Position Statement on the Export of Livestock states that one of the principles guiding the export of animals from Australia is that:

Reader: The operation and regulation of the livestock export industry is conducted in a transparent manner, in which accountabilities, roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and met.

Erica Vowles: But the live export industry itself finds it difficult, it says, to get full information. MLA Livestock Exports Manager, Scott Hansen.

Scott Hansen: The detailed internal AQIS reports that go into blow-by-blow descriptions of what occurred on the vessel, they weren't privy, the industry hasn't been privy to those reports, in fact the first of those that we saw were courtesy of the Animals Australia website.

Erica Vowles: Scott Hansen said MLA's main focus is to ensure there will be no more incidents of high animal deaths.

At Livecorp, the body that represents companies that export live animals from Australia, CEO, Cameron Hall says his industry is supportive of increased transparency.

Cameron Hall: There's a range of information there for people to be able to access and if they wish to follow that through further, obviously as Animals Australia did, they can apply under FOI to get the full reports. But industry don't have those reports either. So I think aiming the arrows at the industry and questioning the transparency of the industry isn't quite right.

Erica Vowles: Would you call on them in future to release all of the full investigations, put them all up on the website, so no one's hiding anything and we can all be transparent. Would you call them to do that? If industry is saying it wants to be transparent?

Cameron Hall: Look, we're working with AQIS down that path at the moment because it's very difficult for industry to be successfully making change and to be successful and being able to promote the significant changes that have occurred and the improvements that have occurred when they don't have full access to all of the information at the same time either.

Erica Vowles: This is Background Briefing on ABC Radio National. I'm Erica Vowles. We know that some markets taking live animals also take Australian meat. But the thing that prevents more animals from being slaughtered here, where their welfare can be safeguarded, is simple. Out in the saleyards, the dollars and cents of all this becomes clear. A buyer for the overseas live animal market can afford to pay considerably more for animals than a buyer for a regional abattoir. That's because the overseas live animal trader has far fewer expenses. They don't need abattoir premises or workers, or freezer rooms. They send the cattle, sheep or goats off on a ship, and at the other end there will be lower tariffs on live animals in most countries than those placed on processed meat.

Over the past three decades, the meat industry union estimates that 170 abattoirs have closed, partially as a result of the competition with the live trade. In the report released in July, by MLA and Livecorp, it was revealed that in some parts of Australia, like the top end of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, there are now no abattoirs at all, and all cattle from there go off as live animal shipments.

MLA Livestock Exports Manager, Scott Hansen.

Scott Hansen: The main markets are up into South East Asia. The journey across the sea to Indonesia, Malaysia being our largest two marketplaces, but with a handful of smaller South East Asian markets also take our cattle. But by far the largest market for our live cattle trade out of the northern part of Australia is into Indonesia.

Erica Vowles: So the live animal industry argues it must be allowed to remain viable, because there are no abattoirs to do the slaughtering in northern Australia.

But not everyone agrees that this is a reasonable justification for continuing to allow the trade to exist. The meatworkers union says 20,000 abattoir jobs have disappeared in the last two decades, and the live animal trade has responsibility for some of this. From the West Australian branch of the Meat Industry Employees Union, Graeme Haynes.

Graeme Haynes: You must remember there were a flourishing meat processing industries in the Kimberley. They've all been eliminated as a result of being unable to operate viably. I mean you create the scenario that then leads to the problem, and then you use the problem as a sustainable argument for the industry that caused the problem in the first place.

Erica Vowles: To be fair, abattoirs have closed across Australia for a number of reasons. But Graeme Haynes blames the live trade for the lack of abattoir capacity that now exists in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Graeme Haynes: In Western Australia over the last two decades, we've seen the loss of some 51 registered abattoirs close and with that the attendant loss of what we would estimate to be in the order of about 12,000 jobs. And that doesn't count the multiplier effect that would apply in the regional communities from where those abattoirs were located.

Erica Vowles: The report by MLA and Livecorp into why the live trade is important for Australia's economy doesn't convince the RSPCA either.

They have also said the live exporters have been preparing for another controversy such as the one that erupted this week. Current CEO Heather Neil.

Heather Neil: Obviously when they're operating in a high risk industry such as the live export industry, they do need to plan for the worst, and this is creating a scenario and a picture that is a really bad picture. But we don't think that the economics of it are as they present. If there was a disaster, the markets would respond; governments are known to provide structural adjustment packages, they've done it for multiple other industries.

Erica Vowles: But the RSPCA still says live animal exports should be closed down over time. Heather Neil.

Heather Neil: There are large numbers of animals that die and they die a terrible death. The best way we believe for that not to happen is for those animals not to get on the ship in the first place. And that is that they're slaughtered in Australia under Australian regulations and exported at a higher value to the same and other markets.

Erica Vowles: In the meantime, Animals Australia is continuing to press ahead with further FOI requests on more shipments with high mortality rates. While AQIS undertook to place the documents for 2007 shipments that had high mortality rates up on their website by the end of September, as this program goes to air, they have not been posted.

Every shipment of live animals that takes longer than 10 days must have an AQIS veterinary surgeon on board. It's a job Dr Craig Pullen has done for four years, and he says though he doesn't really like the live animal trade, things are getting better.

Craig Pullen: Certainly if you look at the statistics of the mortalities on board they are being reduced every time, even within the last 12 months, the difference between the first six months and the last six months up until the end of the last financial year, there was a quite significant reduction in the numbers. These numbers are reported to the government every six months, and certainly the number of animals that are dying on the ships is reducing all the time.

Erica Vowles: Dr Pullen has been on seven journeys, mainly to the Middle East. While government legislation stipulates that he must be on board, the company exporting the animals pays his salary. He says that for the time being, the live trade is a necessity, and that he feels he can make a difference by working within the trade rather than outside it.

Craig Pullen: Are we looking at the welfare of animals from Australia, or the animals from other parts of the world? Because Australia has the best practice, we are ensuring that the animals are in the best possible condition when they get there, and there are as few die on board as possible.

Erica Vowles: Despite the considerable growth in meat imports into the Middle East, Dr Pullen says that some parts of the region are not geared up to take meat in any other form than live.

Craig Pullen: On a personal point, I would prefer they all went in freezer boxes, there is no doubt about that, but you have to understand at the other end there is a limited availability of those components. You know, in Mecca, when there is however many million pilgrims there, you can't have frozen food because there's just no facilities there. So the animals have to be live when they get there to supply the market.

Erica Vowles: Veterinary surgeons like Craig Pullen on board ships have the backing of the Australian Veterinary Association, the AVA, to participate in the trade. This group says its support is conditional on the basis that animal welfare is not compromised at any stage of the export process. The AVA monitors the live trade and it withdrew its support for exports to Egypt after cruelty revelations in 2006 by Animals Australia.

Dr Pullen says it's his job to work to make things better.

Craig Pullen: You know if there's an issue there I'd certainly like rather than saying, well you know, turn my back on it and walk away from it, I'd probably use things like my position in the AVA to try and lobby government to make these changes for the betterment of the industry. I think we need to use what knowledge we have to try and make things better for everyone.

Erica Vowles: Background Briefing's Co-ordinating producer is Linda McGinness. Research, Anna Whitfeld. Technical producer, Leila Shunna. And Executive Producer, Kirsten Garrett. And don't forget, documents mentioned in this program can be found on the Background Briefing website.

I'm Erica Vowles and this is ABC Radio National.

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