Following the release of horrific footage of the conditions for sheep on live export ships shown on 60 Minutes on Sunday April 8, at least three politicians have broken ranks with their parties to call for a ban on the trade. Liberal backbencher Sussan Ley is leading the charge with Private Member’s Bill to shut down the trade, and support for the indusry from within the ranks of both the Coalition and Labor is slipping.

Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty’s Suzanne Cass, while welcoming the move, was scathing of politicans who remain supportive of the industry.

‘Animal advocates, as is the whole wider community, are just shaking their heads and wondering if these people saw the same vision as we did. Those poor sheep, filmed over no less than five voyages, were absolutely piteous. It’s within the regulations to cram sheep in at three per metre, but outside the regulations, we saw that pregnant sheep had given birth to lambs who died horribe deaths, feed troughs containing nothing but dust from poor quality pellets, and the water troughs were almost empty. And most of the sheep couldn’t even get near them – evn if they could, they were drowinging in excrement, and well past the point of no return. Even sadder is the knowledge from whistleblower Faizal Ullah confirmed, that this is “just routine”‘.

Ms Cass believes that some of the sheep thrown over the side were still living. She also remains unconvinced that Tasmanian sheep are not being exported to the Middle East, but says it is impossible to confirm that.

‘I asked the Department of Primary Industry about this some time ago, and was told that “they don’t know”, which hardly seems good enough’.

Since Ms Ley has taken this stand, another Liberal backbencher, Jason Wood, has spoken out, along with Labor’s Josh Wilson, the Member for Fremantle, from where the majority of sheep are exported. Agriculture Minister David Littleproud has announced that a review is to be undertaken, but no shipments heading for the northern summer will be suspended.

‘There are many problems with the Minister’s announcements’, sid Ms Cass. ‘Firstly, the ship at the centre of this storm, the Awassi Express remains docked in Fremantle and cannot get a licence. If and when it does, it will only be allowed to load 57,000 sheep. However, the Maysora, a smaller and older ship, was allowed to sail on one of the longest of long-haul voyages last week with 77,000 sheep and 9,500 cattle on board. There is nothing about that that can be defended’.
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The Maysora is one of the only three remaining ships to have double-tiered pens, so that twice the number of sheep can be loaded. All three are the oldest of the the live export fleet (Maysora at almost 30 years old, The Al Shuwaikh at 34 years old and the Bader III at 41 years old).

‘The Bader III is expected in Adelaide tomorrow, and in 2014, 4,179 sheep died on one heat exhaustion event in a 24 hour period, in conditions arguably even worse than thiose we saw on the Awassi Express. As for the Minister’s Whistleblower Hotline, he cannot be serious. The exporters will NEVER allow vision like we’ve seen to get out again, so no crew member will be allowed to keep their phone after these ships sail. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve seen this posturing so many times before, both from the LNP and from Labor before them.

‘If the Minister was serious, and expected any faith or trust from the community he would halt all live exports immediately and permanently, and move forward towards a total ban on the trade, thereby providing jobs to Australians instead of shipping them offshore, as he just has by giving Vietnamese slaughterhouses $146 million taxpayers’ dollars. Overall, he seems to be trying to treat the Australian community as fools’, Ms Cass concluded

(Further note: Proposals for an Inspector General for Animal Welfare so far have it sited within the Depatment of Agriculture, which would make it as compromised as the Department itself is)
SUZANNE CASS, STOP TASMANIAN ANIMAL CRUELTY