A ten-year plan to phase out live animal exportsTemporary bans on live cattle and sheep export have undermined confidence in the industry, driving property prices down and diminishing banks' willingness to lend for long-term improvement. If the industry wants to avoid death by a thousand cuts, it must act now to phase out live export.
A phasing out of export of livestock for meat over the next ten years or so may be a necessity for a viable industry in the long term. It would require careful preparation and arrangements for compensation for those adversely affected.
Welfare issues
It is widely recognised that sending animals overseas to slaughter is not the only welfare problem. Indeed it is not even the most important welfare issue for livestock; good nutrition and veterinary care have a much greater impact over the animals' lifetime. However, live export is a welfare issue that we can fix, and developing a long-term solution will be much better for producers than the repeated temporary bans invoked by government.
Most producers care a great deal for their livestock, and many have been deeply disturbed to see how some of the animals that they so attentively nurtured are treated after they™ve left their property.
These welfare problems are not just the multiple stresses that animals are exposed to during the export process, but Australia lack of control of the transport and slaughter process after the animals have arrived at their destination port. Regulatory authorities also have little control over practices on the ships: the stockpeople, vets and crew are employed by the industry so there is no independent authority to oversee the process. In other animal-risk situations, such as abattoirs, government inspectors are present: the same should be true on live export boats.
Markets for meat
The long-term prospects for beef and sheep meat exports from Australia are good. Demand, especially for beef, is increasing as developing countries become more affluent and change to a Western style diet. This will continue while wealth in Eurasia and the Americas transitions from traditionally wealthy countries to those until recently considered poor. Opportunities for export from Australia to Asia are considerable because of the limited land available in Asia for livestock production.
Introducing a permanent ban over a long period would allow Australian producers to adapt their systems. Meatworks would have to be set up in the north of Australia. For many producers, live export is the only option because of the lack of northern abattoirs. It is not economic to truck cattle thousands of kilometres to the nearest abattoirs, Brisbane or Perth. Abattoirs existed in the north until the 1990s but were phased out as the live export trade grew.