Pics: The sheep in Pakistan. Aircraft transport … many have died on aircraft because of a ventilation failure.
As the Abbott government relentlessly drives an agenda of massive increases in the live animal export trade, more shocking violations of the rules, and even the law have emerged.
Last week, the ABC’s 7.30 program reported on alleged forgery and corruption within the live export trade, in this case, it involves a shipment of sheep sent to Bahrain by Wellard Rural Exports in August/September 2012. Wellards’ ‘flagship’ vessel, the M/V Ocean Drover was refused permission to unload the ship due to concerns about the contagious disease ‘scabby mouth’ (or ‘orf), amongst a few of the sheep, and 22,000 were reported at the time to have left Bahrain for a ‘contingency’ destination, Pakistan. Curiously, later reports said that 21,000 sheep arrived in Pakistan. Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty has always believed that this was the intention all along, since Wellards had interests in a commercial slaughter facility in Pakistan for which it wanted quick approval under the previous government’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS).
What is lesser known is that another shipment to Bahrain at the same time on the M/V Al Shuwaikh was also re-routed for the same reason, and those sheep were unloaded in Kuwait (where they may well have been those who were the subject of a complaint against Emanuel Exports by Animals Australia)
You can see the program and read the transcript here:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s3985413.htm
The fate of those sheep is something Australia will never forget. The Pakistani authorities, upon learning that Bahrain had refused to accept the sheep, commenced one of the most brutal massacres ever seen of the animals by clubbing, stabbing, and burying them alive, some still clinging to life being dug up again and butchered.
There is much speculation about the numbers as always. 7.30 reported that 601 sheep had ‘gone missing’, yet it would appear that there were more than that who met an unknown fate. Numerous communications from the Department of Agriculture over the years refer to numbers of sheep as ‘approximate’. So, if the Department never knows how many sheep were loaded on these long, gruelling voyages, how can its mortality reports ever be considered to be reliable?
Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty filed a Freedom of Information request with the then DAFF (Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, now the Department of Agriculture) and paid a deposit at the time. Wellards appealed the release of the information and the matter was referred to the Office of the Information Commissioner. Despite a direction from the OIC and our paying the balance, we are yet to receive the information requested, and now this report has emerged. One of the questions we asked was how an ‘Australian Authorised Officer’ in Perth could sign a health declaration about the sheep 29 days after they had left Austrralia, We asked how many sheep this officer inspected and on what dates did s/he inspect them. We have to assume that this could be amongst the documents that the exporter’s then representative, one Gary Robinson created ‘magic’ from as outlined in 7.30.
Robinson, who is at the centre of he controversy, which the ABC’s Matt Peacock descibes as ‘criminal acts if proven’ is now the General Manager of the exporter, Jordanian owned Livestock Shipping Services. LSS has been the subject of multiple complaints about breaches of the former government’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS), including horrific video evidence we have seen from Egypt, Israel, Mauritius, Jordan, Kuwait and Gaza. It is also the exporter responsible for the deaths by heat exhaustion of 4,179 sheep on its old ship the M/V Bader III’ last September when the sheep literally cooked alive. And on an air export from Melbourne to Kazakhakstan, a significant number of cattle died of suffocation from ammonia fumes during the 17 hour flight after a ventilation failure on the aircraft.
But LSS has never had a single penalty imposed upon it of any substance or meaning. No fine, and no suspension of its licence, and it continues to receive export permits from the Department of Agriculture today.
As far as we can establish, he appears to have parted company from Wellards around the time of the Pakistan atrocity, moving to Livestock Shipping Services, His contempt for ESCAS is widely reported.
No action has ever been taken against LSS.
Also shown in the program was horrific slaughter of cattle exported by LSS in Gaza. Animals Australia first lodged complaints about Livestock Shipping Services’ cattle being tortured in Gaza last October, and it was announced that a ‘halt’ on exports to Gaza was in place. The evidence showed cattle being beaten, kicked, their legs dragged out splayed from beneath them, tendon slashing, eye stabbing and even knee-capping of a tied up bull with an assault rifle. Yet onty last week, further evidence of emerged of cattle being similarly tortured in Gaza between February and April this year – cattle who should never even have been in that country. And the obscene torture is arguably the worst we have seen to date, including the evidence from Indonesia which stopped the trade to that country for an all-too-short five weeks three years ago.
More imformation is at Animals Australia’s website and its Facebook page here, but be warned, it is vicious, brutal abuse, and shows obscene torture and sadism. Please DO NOT WATCH the video if you are easily distressed.
http://animalsaustralia-media.org/upload/photos/live-export-gaza2014/
https://www.facebook.com/AnimalsAustralia
Yet the complaint has not yet appeared on the investigations website of the Department of Agriculture, which typically takes 8-12 months to conduct its investigations. Mostly, they take the form of a ’desktop audit’, meaning that no-one bothers to leave their desk in Canberra. The process usually involves the exporter outlining what it will do to ‘fix the problem’, DA agrees, imposes no penalty and it is just business as usual. DAFF does note in one of its reports, however, that the ‘full inversion’ slaughterboxes used in these foreign hellholes are known to crush the ribs and pelvises of the terrified animals. These cattle were found in both ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ slaugherhouses in Gaza.
Meanwhile, live exports have recommenced to Bahrain with the first shipment of sheep on the Al Shuwaikh arriving last Saturday following Minister Barnaby Joyce’s visit to several Middle Eastern countries to talk up this wretched trade in animal misery and suffering. The trade to Egypt, where the abuse was similarly horrific, has also been re-opened. Who can forget the beautiful white bull with blood pouring from his eye sockets? The trade to Egypt has been shut down several times, each time for the same reasons, and every time animals have been sent there following such a ban the same torture has been repeated. The Department of Agriculture generally refers to this obscenity is ‘poor animal handling’, and in its report on Egypt it actively defamed the courageous Egyptian veterinarian who ‘blew the whistle’. It claimed he had a conflict of interest over the slaughterhouses and that it could not contact him for an interview. We have discussed these baseless allegations with Dr Abdelwahab Ali, and he stated that despite all the authorities having, and having had all his contact details, no-one tried to contact him. He is also living in fear and poverty, so the allegations of conflicts of interests are, we believe, baseless.
Even if this evil trade could ever be humane, the relentless drive to expand live exports is going to once again decimate the meat processsing industry, and jobs in satellite businesses which depend upon it.The trade in frozen meat to all these countries is worth about 8 times more than the trade in live animals, and accounts for about 0.6% of Australia’s exports. Only about 2% of farmers supply it. These countries will take live animals over frozen meat because it creates jobs in those countries, and as well, they impose artificial tariff barriers on frozen meat that they do not apply to live animals. Not a single one of the old ships used in the trade is registered in Australia and all the crews are from third world countries with no regard at all for animal welfare. Australia loses, in terms of thousands of jobs which it cannot afford, as well as lost GDP and household income.
You can help to stop this by writing to all the Senators in your state, and to your Federal Member of the House of Representatives. In Tasmania, those are:
Julie Collins (Franklin)
Eric Hutchinson (Lyons)
Andrew Nicolic (Bass)
Brett Whiteley (Braddon)
And please copy your letters to Andrew Wilkie, Member for Denison as he continues to fight against this trade.
Also please write to Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott. You will find, should you try to discuss this with any LNP pol;iticians, they will refuse to do so, and they have blocked animal advocates from their social media pages.
You can also write to the media, and join the ‘Meat Free Pledge’ which you will find at the ABLE Action Ban Live Export Facebook page, please click the ‘going’ tab.
https://www.facebook.com/events/649030625145541/?ref=22
