Aust, reconsiders live sheep export controls

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 28

Aust, reconsiders live sheep export controls

By CHRIS PETERS NZPA staff correspondent In the wake of the loss of more than 16,000 sheep in one export shipment to the Middle East earlier this year, Australian farmers are beginning to accept that tighter controls are needed on live sheep exports. The Victorian Farmers and Graziers’ Association, representing one of the main export areas in Australia, has given cautious support to recommendations by the R.S.P.C.A. for tighter controls on the export of live sheep. Mr Kevin Shiell, executive director of the association’s pastoral group, told reporters in Melbourne that the farm industry in general supported moves aimed at making the export of livestock more humane. He said the trade was too

valuable to Australia to ignore the recommendations of such organisations as the R.S.P.C.A. which has just released a report on the big sheep loss in July. An Australian Senate committee recommended in August that welfare matters connected with live sheep exports be improved, the committee’s chairman later called for them to be phased out in the long term, and the R.S.P.C.A. also wants the trade replaced by carcase trade only. Their concerns were given dramatic new fuel in August when it was revealed that 16,000 sheep died in 24 hours aboard the livestock carrier Fernando F when she ran into a heatwave on the voyage to the United Arab Emirates. The toll added to the one million sheep that have re-

portedly died in transit from Australia over the last five years. But according to industry sources the trade is worth more than sAust2oo ($274) million a year to Australia, and losses of 1 to 2 cent are considered acceptable. The state secretary of the Australian Meat Industry Employee’s Union, Mr Wally Curran, has renewed his union’s condemnation of live sheep exports on economic and “humanitarian” grounds, saying the closedown of export abattoirs in Victoria had taken out facilities that would never be replaced. He also called for tighter controls on the quarantining of ships entering Australian ports to transport livestock, saying that little research had been done into their potential to import disease.