Darkthorn’s Blog

“We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings.”
Good evening members of the Lion’s Club, parents and friends. With these wise words of Mahatma Gandhi I will begin my talk to you about Australia’s part in the live sheep and cattle export trade. I warn you that what I have to say could put you off eating meat.

I think that it is safe to say that most of you have heard about “The Cormo Express”, the Australian transport ship which in 2003 carried 57 thousand sheep destined for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was turned back after local authorities claimed that more than 5 percent of the sheep had scabby mouth, a mouth-ulcer disease which can be passed on to humans. In all, the sheep suffered on board for nearly three months before being disembarked in Eri-tray-a. This cost Australian tax-payers 11 million dollars, which included paying Eri-tray-a to accept the sheep.

A less well known example is that of “The Uniceb” which burnt at sea in 1996. 67 and a half thousand sheep were left on board while the ship took eight days to sink. Being burnt to death is not a fate I’d wish on any creature! Numerous other shipments of live animals have suffered similar catastrophes.

The live export industry earns an average of 830 million dollars annually. In 2005-06 Australian live cattle exports were valued at 404 million dollars. Live cattle exports were mainly to Indonesia but also to the Middle East and other Asian countries. Live sheep exports were valued at 210 million dollars, the destination almost exclusively the Middle East. In contrast, frozen and chilled meat exports came to a grand total of 5.9 billion dollars. This shows that we have a viable alternative to live shipping.

Here in Australia, abattoirs have the facilities to humanely slaughter animals to the requirements of Muslim customers. This involves Halal slaughtering, where the animal’s throat is cut so that it bleeds to death. Conditions in our abattoirs are regulated and inspected and Animals are treated with a stun gun blow to the head to ease their pain before death.

The impact of livestock export has been the loss of an estimated 17 thousand Australian jobs, with country abattoirs closing down. Also, the opportunities to value add by processing the meats appropriately are wasted. When Australia has finally done away with the live exports we will be rightly proud of our red meat industry.

Most transport ships for cattle and sheep are not custom built and so are unsuited to the job. There is poor drainage, leading to sheep literally swimming in their own excrement. 47% of sheep that die on the ships starve to death because they are so tightly packed in pens they are unable to reach food. Other sheep are tossed into the sea while still alive because they have become ill or are unsuitable for the overseas market. Limited ventilation means that air circulation when the ship is docked is nil. Many animals die waiting to be unloaded onto trucks. The surviving animals are then crammed into the trucks and driven to feedlots where they wait to die a cruel and painful death.

Sheep and cattle traded in the live export market are horrifically mutilated before death. In some Middle Eastern abattoirs the workers cut the tendons in the panicking animals’ legs, smash in their knees and stab out their eyes in an effort to try and control them. After that, each poor animal has its throat cut without any prior stunning. Veterinary research has shown that a sheep remains conscious of its mortal pain for 30 to 40 seconds after its throat has been cut, and a cow for a minute and a half. Please think about that.

Thank you for listening to the facts and opinions I have presented to you about the livestock trade. You may think that I must be a vegetarian after hearing all that! Not so, I actually grew up on a beef cattle property, where we slaughtered our own cattle for table meat. However, I am totally against the live export trade if it means that the cattle and sheep are tortured before death.

If you feel concerned about some of the things I have spoken about, please call your local member of parliament or even send a letter directly to John Howard himself. These horrors mustn’t continue any longer.

This was a speech I wrote for a Lion’s Club Public Speaking competition, I didn’t win though.