Desmond Bellamy, PETA Australia, Byron Bay
The Agriculture Department deserves a vote of thanks from all Australians for its decision to suspend the licence of the largest live sheep exporter, Emanuel Exports.
Pictures of dead and dying heat-stressed sheep aboard the Awassi Express on a trip to the Middle East sparked public outrage earlier this year and led to a government inquiry into the trade.
The premier of Western Australia, from where the ship departed, described the behaviour of the export companies as ‘appalling’.
This was not an isolated incident.
Every year, millions of Australian sheep and cows are sent on hellish journeys to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and Agriculture Department figures indicate that more than 2.5 million animals have died on live-export ships before even reaching their destination, from heat stress or starvation, as they don’t recognise the pellets they’re given as food.
Nor is this suffering, either on the sea or at the destination, new.
A joint investigation in 2006 by PETA and Animals Australia documented workers in an Egyptian slaughterhouse stabbing Australian cows, gouging their eyes out, and slashing their leg tendons.
These tragic and unnecessary scenes occur with sickening regularity, one of the worst being the death of thousands of sheep, literally baked alive, on their way to the Middle East in 2013 on the Bader III.
This trade is only made financially possible by radically cutting all considerations of animal welfare.
Not surprisingly, a veterinarian who worked on board these ships wrote in the Sydney University journal Control and Therapy in 2014 that live export can never be humane.
The department has taken worthwhile action in suspending the licence of the largest live exporter.
Now it’s more than time for the next step: to ban this vile trade for good.
Now, Emanuel Exports is reportedly submitting a Notice of Intention to export the 60,000 sheep allegedly ‘stranded’ in a feed lot at Baldivis, near Fremantle, and the 33 year old death ship Al Shuwaikh has come into Fremantle from Kwinana. The Al Shuwaikh is one of the last remaining three with the hideous double tiered pens, meaning they can cram in twice as many sheep.
It is staggering that what is essentially the SAME COMPANY can do this. Any licence suspension should have encompassed ALL Emanuel companies, to prevent such a travesty as this happening. In other words, the licence suspension is not worth the paper it is written on.
If this shipment goes ahead, the sheep will leave from the cold of our winter, to sail through 50 degree heat in the Middle East. Thousands upon thousands will die. It is NEGLIGENT AND RECKLESS in the extreme.
The Minister says he cannot intervene because these things are done by an ‘independent regulator’. That is an outright lie, it is HIS DEPARTMENT which grants these permits. This is just like his claim that there are now ‘independent observers’ on these death ships. Those ‘observers’ are staff from HIS Department.
WHAT A DISGUSTING FRAUD THIS HAS BEEN.