Right: while the NT's Gunbalanya community meatworks supplies only local towns, it has been suggested that live exports of cattle and sheep should be replaced with carcasses grown, processed and frozen in northern Australia . Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
By the end of 2012, Australia's Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS) is meant to apply in all countries to which we export live sheep and cattle.
Questions remain as to whether the extension of this scheme will solve the problems of animal cruelty and abuse which periodically come to light.
Even if all importing nations were to abide by the standards Australia has developed, it seems unlikely that this would eliminate all instances of what Australians regard as cruelty. For example, the Australian standards do not require that animals be stunned before slaughter. This means, even under the best of circumstances, animal suffering will continue.
This concern does not take into account what can occur when the standards are not applied. The most recent episode brought to light by the Four Corners report, 'Another Bloody Business' reveals what can happen when one contractual understanding is not acted on and when another is hastily cobbled together. Bahrain refused to take a shipment of Australian sheep on the basis of supposed health concerns about the animals and then when they were hastily arranged to be exported to Pakistan, both exporter and importer lost control of the livestock, with the local importer apparently being threatened that his abattoir would be closed down if he took the animals. They were then brutally killed in an ad hoc and inhumane manner.
Though supporters of live exports can claim that these circumstances were unusual, critics maintain they are not so unusual as to be unlikely to occur again.
What happens from this point will in large measure depend on the extent of the discomfort of the Australian public. When Four Corners ran its first program on the abuse of cattle exported to Indonesia in 2011, the extent of popular distress was so great that there was a six month ban imposed on live exports to Indonesian importers.
In the interim, the regulations and the supervisory procedures have been tightened, though currently they apply only to Indonesia.
This has allowed the livestock industry and those politically responsible for live exports to present themselves as having taken all reasonable measures. Many people seem to have accepted this, as the extent of popular outrage in response to the most recent Four Corners program on livestock exports has been less.
Therefore it remains problematic as to what the future of the industry will be. If there are more instances of severe animal abuse made public, the pressure of popular disquiet may be sufficient to halt the industry.
Long term planners have suggested that the most prudent approach would be to extend processing facilities in northern Australia so that Australian farmers can export frozen carcasses.