In the wake of the Government’s report into the 37 latest violations by two live exporters, animal advocates in Hobart are holding a candlelight vigil for the anniversary of last year’s Four Corners program ‘A Bloody Business’.
‘A Year since we saw ‘Tommy’ shake….
Just 12 months ago, Australia watched in horror as ‘Tommy’ became the face of the torture of cattle at Indonesian slaughterhouses. Trembling with terror, he watched as other cattle were brutalised during slaughter whilst fully conscious. Cattle were beaten, had their leg tendons slashed, eyes gouged and tails broken to force them to slaughter.
Just a few short months after the Government’s failed ‘Exporter Supply Chain Assurance’ scheme was implemented in Indonesia and other export markets, Animals Australia was able to uncover the fact that nothing has changed, and the Government’s program was a complete and abject failure.
Caring Tasmanians will be holding a candlelight vigil to commemorate Tommy, and the millions of other animals who have suffered and died at the hands of the live export industry.
WHERE: PARLIAMENT LAWNS, Hobart
WHEN: Saturday, June 2, 2012
TIME: From 6.00p.m.
In other news, Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty has filed a formal complaint with the Commonwealth Ombudsman against the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Philip Glyde.
The complaint refers directly to Mr Glyde’s conduct in the investigation of Animals Australia’s recent complaint of violations of the ESCAS (Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme) by two exporters, International Livestock Exports (ILE) and the Northern Australian Cattle Company (NACC). StopTAC bases its complaint on a failure to act/dereliction of duty by Mr Glyde. It alleges that in the conduct of the investigation, DAFF did not send representatives to Indonesia to examine all slaughterhouses and their compliance, simply relying upon viewing the footage from Animals Australia, an analysis by the RSPCA, and statements from the exporters. StopTAC claims that Mr Glyde’s conduct of the investigation resulted in manifestly inadequate penalties against the two exporters concerned. Two directors of ILE, Graham Daws and Michael Stanton, have been the subject of cruelty charges before (the ‘Al Kuwait case’), and multiple investigations into excessive shipboard mortalities.
‘Quite aside from the fact that, once again, it took an investigation by Animals Australia to identify cruelty as appalling as we saw on Four Corners last year, not the Government’s own process, it seems clear to us that the ESCAS system is a manifest failure and the 37 violations identified in the report could be commonplace across all the markets in which the ESCAS has been implemented’, said Suzanne Cass. ‘This was just a “desktop audit”, which further identified that the Mark IV slaughterboxes, earlier approved by Chief Veterinarian Mark Schipp, may not be compliant with OIE codes after all. Why was this not picked up earlier? What was he thinking? Hundreds of thousands of cattle have been shipped to Indonesia since the implementation of the ESCAS’.
Ms Cass has reviewed a number of the ‘audit report summaries’ available, and says that they are mostly blacked out, and what is not concealed follows a basic, semi-literate template, in which the exporter-employed and paid auditors simply state that all is well, when this is manifestly not the case. She also claimed that there are no reports at all published on the markets in the Middle East and Turkey which are subject to the ESCAS regulations.
‘The outcome of this farcical “investigation” is simply that exporters have to employ “animal welfare officers” in the slaughterhouses in Indonesia – nothing more than another layer of self-regulation. We are stunned by the Gillard government’s specious claim that this sham shows that the ESCAS is working. If Animals Australia was able to find evidence of animals in slaugherboxes being stabbed in the face and eyes and being cut up while still alive, how bad does it have to get before we see a meaningful penalty? At the very least, these exporters’ licenses should have been cancelled’, Ms Cass concluded.
www.animaljusticeparty.org
www.stoptac.org
www.liveexportshame.com
• What Denison Independent Andrew Wilkie told Parliament today
Live Animal Exports
Mr WILKIE: This week marks the first anniversary of the extraordinary Four Corners program about the cruelty being meted out routinely to Australian cattle exported to Indonesian slaughterhouses.
The footage shown that night was nothing short of shocking, and the final images of the beast who had been made to stand and watch one after another of his lot being slaughtered remain seared in my mind. Animal rights activists have given him the name Tommy, but to me he will forever be that beautiful black animal shaking in fear, his eyes bulging in abject terror at what he had witnessed and what he knew would become of him—and know he did, because cattle are more than smart enough to be able to empathise with their kind.
Tommy understood exactly what was going on that day.
The government was slow to act one year ago, but as we know eventually it did, though regrettably in ways much more in accordance with the needs of the live animal export industry than with the needs of the hundreds of thousands of cattle, sheep and goats shipped from our shores every year. Surely it was not too much to expect the government to react in an ethical and, I would add, a democratic way considering the clear desire of so many Australians for a genuine clampdown on the cowboys running Australia’s systemically cruel live export industry. Yes, the government did try to ensure that exports would now comply with OIE standards, but this is nowhere near what is needed to ensure that Australian exports are treated humanely, and in any case it is unenforceable due to the absence of any sort of reliable supervisory regime. Hence it surprised no-one when this year two Indonesian slaughterhouses processing Australian beasts were shown on television to be still treating our cattle horrendously. Enough is enough. The government must stop caring more about the profitability of primary producers than the welfare of animals. Even if that is all it does care about, surely it can understand that Indonesia is working towards red meat self-sufficiency and it is in Australia’s economic self-interest to wind back the industry which has cannibalised our own chilled and frozen meat operations.
Of course, cattle exports to Indonesia are just the tip of the iceberg, because there is also, for example, the export of sheep to the Middle East on towering ships where the animals are stuffed on board in appalling and stifling conditions. All this must stop, and one day it will; it must. Shame on this government and this parliament for denying the pressing need to do something about it.
